One feeling
by E4mj
Summary: AU. Starting out at the beginning of GOF Harry is feeling uneasy about leaving Sirius on the run, and that his 'adventures' take up all his choices in life. his responses slowly change the plot completely. NOTE: I own nothing! J.K. Rowling is an amazing author - I am just having fun playing with HER characters and plot. I have definitely taken some direct quotes! forgive me.
1. Chapter 1

It was only a passing comment. Hardly worth note. There were so many Witches and Wizards at the World Cup that the chances of Harry walking past right at that moment were incredibly slim, but none the less he had heard them.

"they were worried Black would turn up here. Cause trouble."

"Why would he? Just be a quick way of getting caught. Not that the bastard doesn't deserve it. I can't believe Fudge…"

The conversation went on as they drifted towards the next section of tents and Harry was distracted as Oliver Wood yelled out to them.

It wasn't as if Harry hadn't been thinking about Sirius. In fact he had been thinking about him an awful lot since he had arrived at the Weasley's. Ron's family just seemed to absorb Harry and Hermione into it, as in 'we've got seven, so what are two more'. It was nice, especially as he didn't really have a proper family, but at the same time something was missing. Mrs. Weasley liked to fuss, and secretly, Harry thought this was why she accepted him, because he was easy to fuss over. It was the closest he had, but it never really felt like what Hermione meant when she talked about her parents. Not that she did too much. They were dentists, and for all her front, Harry was sure that she didn't like to mention them because they were muggles. He wasn't sure, but she hardly ever mentioned them around Ron, and she never mentioned them to anyone outside their little threesome.

Harry tried to shrug it off, but deep down he was hurting for letting Sirius go. He understood. Sirius was on the run from the law, Harry would be a liability… But he had desperately wanted to go. For a few moments Harry thought he was free, that he would never have to return to the Dursley's ever again. Granted, this summer had been much better, mostly due to Sirius. No need to tell the Dursley's that he couldn't really turn up on the doorstep and turn them into bats.

It had been awful, having to let Sirius go, and Harry had been moping. His chance at freedom died with Sirius', Harry had wanted to be rescued, wanted to escape. He had wanted a family of his own, and while Ron's was great, Sirius would be better. Sirius would be… a dad.

Tuning back in to the conversation he realised Oliver had been talking mostly to him, Harry tried to catch back up, congratulating him on making the team. It was good, but that last overheard comment about Sirius really got to him.

They continued their way through the tents, Hermione was making little angry noises at all the ridiculous wizard tents. Ron, of course, was thoroughly enjoying riling her up, pointing out tents on different paths, dragging them on a longer route to go past a tent made entirely of shamrocks, again past another flashing the Bulgarian team names in bright blue. Harry couldn't help but feel there wouldn't be any water left in their buckets by the time they got back to the site. But then he didn't really see why Mr. Weasley hadn't just filled them with his wand inside the tent. If a muggle was in the tent the gig was already up.

Back at the Campsite Mr. Weasley had a running commentary on all the ministry workers going past – and there were quite a few. Harry was really enjoying it, while the Ron and Ginny just rolled their eyes, but for Harry the ministry was unknown territory. Beside him he could see Hermione was itching to take notes. He made a sort of game of it in his head, considering all the careers and if he would like them. Ludo Bagman was rather interesting, mostly because he started a debate in camp about the results of the match, which got Harry talking tactics with the twins. He didn't much mind about who won, or the teams, more how they won. He was excited to see Krum in action too.

"Their chasers are both pretty even..."

"So they shouldn't matter too much…"

"While the beaters…"

"I think Ireland has got the upper hand…"

"Only just mind…"

"Mullet would have been better with…"

"Willow, yes, but then their names…"

"Mullet and Moran, Mullet and Moran, Mullet and Moran."

Harry burst out laughing. He loved the way the twins did that, talked half a sentence each, then got completely distracted midway. Ron was scowling, but Charlie seemed to be silently egging him on.

Yes. Family.

Harry didn't think of Sirius again all the way through the match. Far to much excitement, and to much to think on. Watching Krum had been something else. Sure Harry had lots of Quidditch books, and he got to see the other teams seekers at school, but this was… Well, lets just say he couldn't wait to get back on a broom and give some stuff a try. The excitement lasted late into the night, still, after being sent to bed he lay there, sneaking the occasional look at his Omnioculars, just to see one more bit of re-play. It was a bit too short for his liking, but oh what a game. Eventually he drifted off to sleep, still grinning.

And then all of a sudden he was awake and out of bed, confused at first until he registered what was happening. He could feel the tension building all around them, and even in the forest, the tension felt familiar. Somewhere at the back of his mind a small voice said _well Potter, you're starting your adventures earlier this year_. And once he had the thought, it wouldn't go away. Deeper into the forest Ron and Hermione cast lumos.

"Oh no."

"What?"

"My wand. I think I've lost my wand."

Ron and Hermione held their glowing wands high above their heads, searching the ground. The anxiety increased tenfold. Harry had a tenancy for trouble. Trouble without a wand was not good.

"Maybe it's…" But Ron and Hermione weren't paying attention, being distracted by Winky.

"Maybe she didn't ask for permission."

Ron and Hermione launched into one of their arguments, but Harry just watched the struggling elf. Something wasn't right.

"Come on." Hermione started dragging Harry along, being fed up with Ron. She dragged them almost into a group of Veela. Harry couldn't help but laugh at Stan Shunpike. For a moment the mood was lighter.

"Who's there?"

Ludo Bagman was not looking good. _I wonder if he's involved_. Apparently not, as he demanded to know what was going on.

"Not really on top of this is he?" Harmione asked. Ron started on a rant defending the ex-beater. Harry kept out of it, the unsettling feeling descending again.

The noise behind him made Ron and Hermione jump, Harry just spun around. He didn't like this. He needed his wand.

"Morsmordre!"

Green light came from the voice and erupted upwards, a great scull and snake lighting up the sky. Definitely not good. He dragged his eyes away from it to see a very worried Ron and Hermione.

"What's the matter?"

Hermione was getting paler by the minute.

"It's you-know-who's mark." She said faintly.

"Voldemort's mark?"

Together they started to get away across the clearing when suddenly there were popping sounds all around them. Harry had less than a second to register the wands, grabbing Ron and Hermione by the back of their shirts and pulling them to the ground.

The next twenty minutes passed in a blur, Accusations flew and the elf… Harry couldn't get his head around it. He couldn't help but remember Dobby dealing with Malfoy. It didn't look like he needed a wand for magic. Despite arriving safely back at the tent the unease didn't pass. More than anything Harry didn't like that someone else had used his wand.

The talk back at the tent didn't help. The conversation seemed to swarm around Harry. It caught him out, there was so much he didn't know about Voldemort, and he kept having those dreams. He had written to Sirius. What if the dreams were real. It didn't even feel like a question, he was sure they were real. And now this. He desperately wanted to know what Sirius thought, because if Voldemort was back, Harry was in trouble. More trouble than the muggles being levitated about for fun. More trouble than Hermione as a 'mudblood'. If he came back…well.

Harry missed Sirius. He hardly even knew him, but the more he learnt the more it felt like Sirius was all he had.


	2. Chapter 2

Arrival back at the burrow only served to increase Harry's unease. Mrs. Weasley was distressed; the prophet had published a story on the event. It seemed rather over-the-top and he couldn't understand why she'd believed it, but it had mentioned bodies. Just before they'd left the twins had argued with her and she'd been imagining that as her last words. Harry just stood there watching her crush Fred, then George, then Fred again, into hugs. They were fighting off the embraces, half-heartedly arguing. Ron managed to dodge completely and Charlie and Bill stayed out of it. Still, Harry couldn't help but feel a little jealous. He didn't like hugs much because… well the Dursley's didn't exactly bring him up into them, but he couldn't shake the unease. Mr. Weasley planned to head into the Ministry to help sort it out and Percy seemed to want to make a nuisance of himself and go too. The twins were muttering something that sounded distinctly like 'prat' or 'prig', Harry wasn't quite sure which but couldn't help but agree. He moaned on about his cauldron bottoms report until Arthur was ready and then had a mad rush to change as well.

"I'm sure that Crouch needs the report first thing." Charlie laughed, trying to lighten the mood. Percy seemed to miss the humor.

Despite missing two members the Weasley family seemed to pull closer together. Harry and Hermione were included in this, but Harry still couldn't shake the unease and longed to hear from Sirius.

"Has Hedwig been?"

_I should really think before I speak._ Harry found himself thinking. He had thought about writing to both Hermione and Ron before sending mail to Sirius, and now he was glad he hadn't, they were reacting exactly as he thought they would. Hermione had a long list of books and people Harry didn't trust, and Ron was just freaking out.

"Well, I had dream about Voldemort and Wormtail… Peter. They – He is plotting to kill… someone." _Well that was half thinking first._ Hermione looked at him oddly, but Ron was worse.

"Don't call him that."

"Why not? He's tried to kill me."

"What does that have to say to it?"

"I'll call him whatever I like." Harry started to get annoyed, even more glad that he hadn't written.

"You think it's real don't you?" Hermione interrupted.

"What?" Harry was thrown off mid fight.

"You think the dream is real." She said skeptically.

"Well… Yeah, I do."

"Oh Harry, it was just a nightmare." Harry couldn't help but notice the tiny hint of pleading. She didn't want it to be anything more than a nightmare more like.

"What about Trelawney?" Harry pointed out. Hermione snorted.

"Harry will die a painfull death" Ron said in a high, squeaky imitation of Trelawney. Unfortunately this just annoyed Harry more.

"Yeah well, she's bound to hit on something eventually."

"Harry…" Hermione began, but Harry was annoyed.

"Look, it was different okay. And she didn't even seem to know she'd said it. If it wasn't real she would be gloating all day. Peter did escape, and now I know he's back with his master, so you know what, maybe I will die a painfull death." And with that he slamed Ron's door and stomped back downstairs. He met Fred and George emerging from their room with brooms.

"Care for a fly Harry?" One of them asked, he thought it was Fred, and decided just to go with instinct.

"Thanks Fred, but I don't know if I'm welcome back in Ron's room, so I'm all out of broom."

"How did you- never mind. I'll get your broom." George said, running upstairs. Fred was still staring at him.

"Don't panic, lucky guess. I'm pretty good at Luck." Harry grinned. Fred seemed to shake himself off.

"Oh well. We'll just have to get you back for your increased knowledge." Fred grinned. Harry grinned back, he may notbe able to trust his secrets in the twins, but he needed a laugh.

Ten minutes later found not three but four boys out on brooms, Charlie had decided that Harry needed to be put in his place where seekers were concerned. He wasn't having much luck. Normally the boys didn't let their snitch out, but decided with two good seekers the chance of it getting away were pretty slim. They were right, Harry caught it within five minutes.

"Ha! It's good to be back." Harry yelled, snitch in hand.

"Bloody hell, did you gt it already?" Charlie demanded.

"What can I say…" Harry shrugged, but grinning.

"Jealous brother?" One of the twins said, whacking Charlie on the back.

"I blame the broom." Charlie grinned. This made Harry grin more.

"Swap?" Charlie's face lit up, in a way Harry recognized from Ron's face, but he seemed hesitant.

"Well, I really shouldn't…" He said, but it was obvious to Harry anyway.

"Come on, you'll hurt my pride if you go around saying I'm all broom." Harry dropped out of the sky, landing perfectly lightly on his feet. "Besides, you better get in before Fred and George have a go and ruin it." This sent Harry running as one of the twins hit a bludger at him in retaliation.

"Oi!" yelled Harry.

"Yeah," agreed the other twin, "That was clearly my idea."

Charlie had been shy around Harry since they'd met, the-boy-who-lived was rather intimidating. Apparently watching him be chased around on foot by his brothers bludgers seemed to shake the last of that away. So he flew down and swapped his old cleen-sweep for the Firebolt.

"Oh WOW!" Charlie yelled taking off. "I seriously need one of these!"

"That's funny, a Sirius gave it to me." Harry joked, sending the twins into whoops of laughter, but just confusing Charlie more. Charlie seemed to shake himself off a little though, "No time for chit-chat, let go of that snitch. We'll give it a few minutes to escape before I catch it!" He grinned.

"You'll have to beat me to it!" Harry grinned. "You should give some of Krums moves a go. That feint was amazing!" Said Harry, swooping and diving, trying to get used to the slower broom.

"I couldn't." Said Charlie, staring wistfully at the ground.

"Which is why Harry will beat you to the snitch." Laughed one of the twins.

"Afraid brother?" The other teased.

"Worried you'll add to those charming scars?" The first continued. Harry had been trying to work out their differences, but on brooms it was impossible.

"Not for me!" Charlie yelled, ducking the bludger.

"Then what for?" Harry demanded, knowing the answer.

"The broom." Charlie blushed. This caught Harry out on more than one count, despite their red hair, most of the Weasleys spent more time red from anger than blushing, and usually you had to spend hours prying the truth out of them when they were embarrassed.

"I haven't yet, and more than a few games of Quidditch have had a go at that broom. All I ask, is that if you break it, you have to be the one sneaking me out to Diagon Alley to get a new one, and you sure as hell better have my back when your mum finds out." Harry grinned.

It took a bit more cajoling from the twins, but after Harry snatched the snitch out from under Charlie's nose and a bit more banter, it was a grinning Charlie that pulled up from the dive just in time to hear Bill and a friend arrive.

"Bloody wow Charles! That was awesome." Bill yelled, walking out of the trees around the edge of the field. "Who let you on that thing?"

"Harry." Said one of the twins.

"And if you're really nice…"

"…And let him get the snitch…"

"…Right out from underneath you…"

"…He might even…"

"…Give you a go too." They said, bouncing of each other's sentences.

"Oi!" Said Harry and Charlie in unison, "You make it sound as if he _let_ me catch the snitch." Harry complained.

"Who said I didn't." Charlie grinned. Harry just threw a spare Quaffle at him.

"Git." Harry grinned, then turned to Bill, "Does your friend play? We could have a game."

"Ron would kill us." Bill grinned, "This is Neil. He's Cedric's cousin."

Charlie did a double take and began nattering on about school, apparently the boy had been in Bill's year, and often visited the Diggory's during the summer. Harry ran off to get Ron and the girls while hey were catching up.

"I thought you were fighting?" George grinned, as Harry led Ron and Ginny back to the field. Harry just grinned at Ron.

"Yeah, but Quidditch outweighed the argument, which I don't even remember now."

So they played four on four, Hermione watching. Neil turned out to be a mean keeper, not letting Bill or Ginny get a single goal through the hoop. The Weasley's had set up the field when the boys were young, putting a basketball hoop at either end, slightly larger and appearing simply bent down to a passing muggle, in played for a fun game. It set the mood for the last week of the holidays; despite Arthur being run of his feet at the ministry, everyone was getting really well in the Weasley house with the surprising exceptions of Hermione and Percy. Someone called Bertha had gone missing, and Rita Skeeter (the person responsible for the, in Harry's eyes ridiculous, articles in the prophet) had found out and was making a fuss. Every time it was mentioned Percy brought up his boss, which led Hermione on to complaining about his treatment of Winky.

By the last night of August, Harry and Ron had left Hermione arguing with Percy the floor below, and were trying to pack for school. The twins had returned to their room to pack, and Harry was finding it rather easy, having packed once at the Dursley's and not needing much since getting to Ron's. The discovery of Ron's dress-robes was secretly a bit amusing to Ron, who, after seeing Harry's new robes went on to moan about how everything he owned was rubbish.

This wasn't exactly a jibe at Harry, he knew this, but he couldn't help feeling a little annoyed, as he was standing there in Dudley's old clothes, held on by a piece of rope, and Mrs. Weasley was at least doing her best. Besides which Harry would have been happy to share some of his wealth but Ron wouldn't hear of it, claiming he didn't want charity. As the moaning was also towards his owl Pigwidgeon (or Pig, as Ron called him), Harry was also frustrated, as Sirius had given him this, and Harry liked the owl.

Harry headed down to breakfast the next morning only to find chaos, something about exploding dustbins. Harry couldn't help but be distracted by the fact that the person bringing this news was Amos Diggory's head in the fireplace. Apparently you didn't have to send your entire body by Floo. He was still trying to get his mid around the implication of your neck stretching through the fireplaces of Brittan when he finally tuned into the conversation.

"Did someone say Mad-Eye?" Bill asked entering the kitchen behind Harry, "What's he up to now?"

Mrs. Weasley went on to explain, apparently there was (Mad-Eye claimed) someone attempting to break into his house, when they were attacked by his dustbins, which proceeded to make a lot of noise and shoot rubbish everywhere. Amos Diggory had called Arthur in the hope that Mad-Eye could be let off with his department on a warning for misuse of muggle artfacts. Personally Harry found the whole thing rather funny, and thought Arthur might spend a lot of his later life trying chasing the twins, as it sounded exactly like something they would set up, he wasn't sure what the big deal was. He was informed that Mad-Eye was an ex-Auror who was good friends with both Dumbledore and Mr. Weasley. Briefly Harry wondered how the Weasley's and Dumbledore were connected, but brushed off the thought, for a more interesting one; what does an Auror do for a job in later life. Mr. Diggory had said the main reason for needing to get Mad-Eye off on lighter charges was because he started his new job tomorrow.

Harry had thought about a job very little, spending most of his time just trying to stay alive. An Auror however seemed to be a good option, or, more to the point, something Harry might be good at. After all, he spent half his school time chasing down Voldemort or battling him. In his last year he'd even caught up with a criminal the ministry couldn't find. Of course the criminl had been looking for his best mate, and he'd also set Sirius free… but then Sirius wasn't really a criminal.

The ride to Kings Cross was amusing, if not a little painful. Fred's trunk had come open, setting off copius amounts of Filibuster's Fabulous No-Hest, Wet-start Fireworks, which had an unfortunate effect on Crookshanks, and already over excited Pigwidgeon, and a very confused taxi driver.

"I wonder how many taxi drivers have that sort of start to their day every September the first?" Harry mused out loud, causing one of the twins to smirk, and Hermione to roll her eyes. It was still pouring rain by the time they all got out of the car, so were more than a little glad to finally make their way to Platform 9¾ in rather conspicuous groups. Harry also wondered just how many people did double takes at Kings Cross every September first, really it was a wonder the Magic world managed to stay hidden at all.

By the time everyone had said their goodbyes the six of them were in a rather grumpy mood. Bill, Charlie and Mrs. Weasley had been dropping hints about something happening at Hogwarts, but refusing to let on, then Malfoy was in the next cabin being his usual self: a prat. This set Hermione off about another school they were wishing Malfoy hadn't just bragged about _almost_ going to. Harry was lost in imagining a Hogwarts without Malfoy for a few moments before dropping back into the conversation.

"Drumstrang, it's another wizarding school. I've heard of it, it's meant to be really dark. Teaches the Dark Arts, rather than defence of." Said Hermione.

"Where is it?" asked Ron.

"No one knows, they keep it rather secret."

"Er- Why?" Harry asked.

"It's the same with most schools, especially the smaller ones. Some you won't even hear about unless you get an invite to attend, or someone applies for a job."

"Yes but why? Hogwarts isn't hidden." Harry tried again.

"Yeah, and Drumstrangs got to be about the same size." Ron added.

Hermione just rolled her eyes, Of course Hogwarts is hidden. Haven't you read Hogwarts a History?" She demanded.

"Why would we? You know it by heart." Ron groaned, "But how is Hogwarts hidden? It's huge, not to mention Hogsmead."

"If a muggle see's Hogwarts it just looks like a ruin, with signs to keep them out. I imagine it's somewhat like the World-Cup as well, Muggle-repelling charms and all sorts. I'm not so sure on Warding.

"Maybe it has the Fidelius charm on it." Harry added thoughtfully. After all, that would work the same. Only know about it if the secret keeper tells you. Dumbledore, or whoever was Headmaster could be the keeper, or maybe someone at the ministry."

"How do you know about the Fidelius charm?" Hermione asked, looking at Harry curiously.

"And what is it?" Added Ron.

"It's…" Harry started, but Hermione interrupted.

"A charm that keeps the location of somewhere hidden inside a person. So only that person can reveal it. You can walk straight past it and not know it's there unless that person has told you where it is. But how did you know?"

"I asked Bill for more information about it, seeing as he knows wards."

"How did that come up though?" She pushed on.

"I was wondering if there was any way of proving that Mum and Dad's secret keeper was Peter. Apparently Peter must have reversed the charm because anyone can see it now. I was hoping it was still under, which would prove that he was still alive."

"Wow, I hadn't thought of that. That's really smart." Harry didn't think she meant this as an insult, but she sounded shocked. Harry decided to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she was shocked at the idea, not that he'd had one. He was sick of playing down his intelligence. Apparently Ron had made the same conclusion.

"You sound surprised." He grinned at Hermione, who blushed, but just pulled out a text book. After a moment the compartment fell silent, Ron fussing over Pigwidgeon, so Harry decided to really stir things up.

"What I really want to know, is why it's considered a charm. It's not affecting the behavior of a substance exactly, just which people can access it." This seemed to work quite well, as Ron stared at him, jaw dangling, and Hermione almost dropped her book.

"Of course it's a charm. I've read about it in _Charming Life_, a bit of extra reading during second year."

"Not every book is always accurate." Said Harry, obviously annoying Hermione more, while Ron still remained slack-jaw.

"It was in the school Library. Besides," she said continuing before Harry could get into that argument, "It is effecting the way a substance acts. It's making it invisible."

"But it's not, it doesn't just become invisible, it ceases to exist to the outside world. If it was between two houses the two on either side would just push together. What's more anyone with prior knowledge of it's existence would know of the street, but not the house. You could stand outside the front door, and not know it was there, meaning it is effecting people's **thoughts** as well. I think it's a curse."

"Yes, but-" Thankfully she was cut off by the arrival of the other Gryfindor fourth years, who had come to discuss the World-Cup.

Dean and Seamus had both been there, and Seamus (being Irish) was still supporting his team. Ron pulled out a mini Viktor Krum model, which walked around his palm, and was beginning to tell Neville about being in the Top-Box at the match When Malfoy invited himself in to rain on their parade. He'd started attacking Ron's family when Harry had enough.

"I'm sorry, I don't remember asking you to join us Draco." He spat out. Malfoy just rolled his eyes, unfortunately they landed on Pigwidgeon's cage, which Ron had covered with his dress-robes to calm the hyper owl.

"What are those?"

Ron tried to grab them out of sight, but Malfoy had always been quicker.

"Oh wow, Weasley you weren't actually going to wear these were you, I mean I'm sure they were fashionable… about two hundred years ago." Harry just groaned, this wasn't going to end politely.

"Well, maybe if you won, you could afford some new ones. Of course you wouldn't even get picked. Dumbledore doesn't get a say, so no prejudice."

"Well you'd know all about prejudice winning your way into things, wouldn't you Malfoy." Said Harry ignoring his curiosity and interrupting Ron.

"What are you going on about?" Ron demanded of Malfoy.

"Aren't you going to enter… no? What about you Potter, surely you can't keep your nose out of a bit of showing off."

"Either explain or get out Draco." Said Hermione, looking up from the textbook she'd buried herself in during the Quidditch talk. Malfoy looked positively gleeful.

"You mean you don't know?" He grinned, "Your father in the ministry Wealsey, and your gran on the Wizengamot Longbottom. Wow, but then I guess the Weasley's aren't very high up, and who would trust you Longbottom." He then withdrew from the compartment laughing.

"What was that all about?" asked Dean.

"Who knows? Probably just Malfoy being a prat." Said Hermione, returning to her book. Ron answered by slamming the compartment door so hard the glass shattered. Harry cast a quick Repairo, while Seamus tried to change the topic back to Quidditch. Ron just stewed in the corner. Neville was catching Harry's attention though, returning to the Quidditch conversation easily.

"Doesn't he bother you?" Harry asked quietly.

"Nah, he's been picking on me since first year and I don't really have back-up, so I've learnt to just let it go."

"Oh. Sorry." Harry blushed, feeling terrible. Truth be told, since the night in first year with the troll, Harry had been content to just have Hermione and Ron. Thinking more and more of Sirius lately he silently made a pact to make more friends this year. After all, the Marauders had one of the tightest knit group of friends he had heard of, and look where that got them.

Eventually Ron joined the conversation again, but kept bringing it back to what Malfoy had said, getting them worked up over what he could have been talking about. Personally, Harry wasn't so worried. Mrs. Weasley had said they'd probably find out tonight, and if it was something Malfoy was interested in then it was probably bad. Trouble had a tendency to find Harry, so he was sure he'd find out soon enough.


	3. Chapter 3

The fourth years all shared a horseless carriage up to the castle, and Harry was extremely happy he'd been on the Quidditch team for so many years. It was pouring down raining and most people arrived soaked, while he had mastered the water-repellent and warming charms years ago. The great hall was just the same as ever, and nothing was drastically different, so whatever Draco had been going on about couldn't start straight away, there wasn't even a new Defence teacher yet. It felt good to be back.

Thankfully Harry forgot to remove these charms, as they were soon introduced to one of The castles constants.

"It's nice to be- ARGH!" Ron screamed as a large red water bomb exploded over his head. Apparently Ron had removed the charms, as he was standing dripping, hair plastered to his head. Harry couldn't help himself and burst out laughing.

"Nice welcome you've got there Peeves. Have a good holiday?" Harry yelled, alerting other students to the danger. Peeves just stuck out his tongue and pelted a balloon at Harry. Harry ducked and it hit a group of girls behind him, who squealed and headed off to their house table.

"Oh come on." Said Hermione dragging them closer to the front of the room. She then proceeded to dry off a grumbling Ron. They sat close to Fred and George, who Harry couldn't help but notice were rather dry.

"Nice balloons boys. Where did you get them?" Harry asked.

"From Tra-… HEY!" Said one of the twins, both turning to glare at Harry.

"We supported you."

"Yeah, even gave up some of our…"

"…more precious secrets."

"And this is what we get."

"Terrible." They said in unison, shaking their heads in opposite directions. Harry just laughed.

"Don't panic, I won't give up the biggest pranksters in eleven years." Harry laughed.

"ELEVEN!" They replied in unison. "More like ever." Harry just grinned.

"What about the owners of a certain bit of parchment?" He wiggled his eyebrows. The twins jaws dropped.

"You figured out when…"

"And who…"

"They were!"

"How?"

Harry hit his palm to his face, he'd completely forgotten that they'd be interested in last years adventures more than most. He was so used to keeping his secrets close.

"Crap. Sorry, I forgot."

"YOU FORGOT!" One of them yelled, gaining a lot of attention.

"You forgot!" The other, probably George, added, pulling his twin back to a sitting position, "We have spent hours researching that and you just… forgot!?"

"You research. Ha! That's a funny one." Said Ron, tuning into the end of their conversation now that he was dry.

"What does Harry know that you don't?" Hermione added. Harry was about to answer, but the twins beat him to it.

"Nothing."

"Nada."

"Absolutely zilch."

So Harry just rolled his eyes and turned to see a very wet Hagrid making his way to the staff table.

"Sorting should be soon." He said, ignoring the glares. This was the first sorting he'd seen since his own, having been battling with the Whomping Willow in second year, and being called aside to check his health after the Dementors in his third. "At least I made it to the feast this year." He muttered to himself as McGonagall lead the drenched first years to the front. At the back of the group one very small boy was wearing Hagrid's moleskin coat, which was half dragging along the floor.

"That's my brother." Said an excited Colin Creevy from next to Harry, "Keep your fingers crossed for Gryffindor!" Harry only just managed to keep the groan silent, as he crossed his fingers… for anything other than Gryffindor.

"It's going to be great! He's really excited!" Colin continued, oblivious to Harry's response. "I've told him all about the castle. And you. He already wants an autograph of one of the pictures I have of you and Lockheart."

This time Harry's groan was out loud, however thankfully the ghosts appeared and Colin was distracted. He turned to find Nearly-Headless Nick next to him.

"Siblings are usually together in the same house aren't they?" Harry asked.

"Not always, but a lot of the time."

Harry groaned again, but tried to focus across the table on Parivati Patail. Her twin wasn't in Gryffindor. There was still hope.

Harry turned back to the front to find the first years lined up and McGonagall explaining what to do. The little boy in Hagrid's coat turned and made eye contact with Colin, two thumbs up he mouthed 'I fell in the lake'. Surprisingly this made Harry feel a bit better, being rather accident-prone himself, at least he hadn't gone that far. Maybe Colin would invest interest in his brother instead of hero-worshiping Harry all year. One could only hope.

The sorting hat began:

**_'_**_A thousand years or more ago, _

_When I was newly sewn,  
There lived four wizards of renown, _

_Whose names are still well known: _

_Bold Gryffindor, from wild moor, _

_Fair Ravenclaw, from glen, _

_Sweet Hufflepuff, from valley broad, _

_Shrewd Slytherin, from fin._

_They shared a wish, a hope, a dream, _

_They hatched a daring plan _

_To educate young sorcerers  
Thus Hogwarts School began. _

_Now each of these four founders _

_Formed their own house, for each _

_Did value different virtues  
In the ones they had to teach._

_By Gryffindor, the bravest were _

_Prized far beyond the rest;  
For Ravenclaw, the cleverest _

_Would always be the best;_

_For Hufflepuff, hard workers were _

_Most worthy of admission; _

_And power-hungry Slytherin  
Loved those of great ambition._

_While still alive they did divide  
Their favourites from the throng,  
Yet how to pick the worthy ones _

_When they were dead and gone? _

_'Twas Gryffindor who found the way, _

_He whipped me off his head _

_The founders put some brains in me _

_So I could choose instead!_

_Now slip me snug about your ears,_

_I've never yet been wrong, _

_I'll have a look inside your mind _

_And tell where you belong!_**'**

"Well that's something." Harry said quietly, as the rest of the hall cheered.

"What's that?" Asked Nick, looking morosely up at the hat.

"There's been times I've wondered if I was sort right. At least now I know the hat still thinks not. 'I've never been wrong' is definitely promising."

Nick smiled at him. "Well, regardless, I'm glad you're here. And I've yet to regret having someone in this house."

Harry wondered if that would include Peter Petigrew. But then Nick didn't know the truth. Hardly anyone did. Harry frowned, but the sorting had begun, so he shook of the thought and cheered the new Gryffindors. Although looking over at the Ravenclaw table he saw the Ravenclaw seeker Cho Chang greeting the new arrivals, and for a brief moment he had the strange desire to join the Ravenclaws as well.

Dennis Creevy inevitably joined the Gryffindors, which Harry tried not to bemoan, clapping just as loudly. He was certainly enthusiastic, excitedly telling how he had fallen in te lake, and something had pushed him bach into the boat.

"It was probably the giant squid." Colin said, also grinning.

"Wow!" said Dennis, as though nobody in their wildest dreams could hope for more than being thrown into a storm-tossed, fathoms-deep lake, and be pushed out of it again be a giant sea monster.

Harry couldn't help but grin and agree with Nick. Despite their rather annoying enthusiasm, he had never met a Gryffindor he wasn't glad was Gryffindor either. Although it was pushing it as he stared very hard at the sorting, ignoring Colin loudly pointing out Harry and his scar.

With a simple 'Tuck in' from Dumbledore the feast appeared much to Ron's loud delight. Unfortunately Nick wasn't so excited, even less so when Ron pointed out it was easier to be excited bout food if you weren't dead. Unsuprisingly this put Nick in a bad mood.

"You're lucky to be getting a feast at all. Havoc in the kitchens."

"What started that?" Hermione enquired politely.

"Peeves got it. Pots and Pans every where, place swimming in soup. The usual mess. But he really upset the house-elves."

There was a loud clang as Hermione knocked over her goblet, filling Ron's plate with pumpkin juice.

"You're not telling me there are house-elves here?" She demanded.

"Of course. Over a hundred. Largest number in any dwelling in Brittan." Nick said proudly as Harry's head sunk to the table.

"But they get paid?" she said. "They get holidays, don't they? And sick leave, and pensions, and everything?"

Nick laughed so hard his head fell off. "Why they'd get offended at the thought." He said, still chortling to himself as he drifted off to worry some more first years. "Pensions indeed."

Hermione looked down at her meal and pushed it away.

"Slave labor." She said firmly, and refused to eat another bite. Ron seemed to take this as a challenge, waving all the different foods under her nose. Harry just wondered what she was planning to eat, starving herself wouldn't help the elves. Neville was now on his left, as Nick had left, so he just asked him about the elves.

"Do you know much about it Neville?" Neville seemed a bit shocked to be asked, but in the end just shrugged.

"We used to have an elf. She always seemed happiest when she had something to do… Actually she used to get annoyed at Gran for making me do chores, seemed to think she might loose out on the job."

Harry thought about Dobby, even in a house where he was obviously treated poorly he seemed inclined to go out of his way to help. Ignoring the battle between Ron and Hermione he was a bit curious. Living at a bording school didn't tell you much about the other students home lives.

"So you live with your gran. What's that like?" He asked. Neville seemed to blanch a bit. "You don't have to tell. I'm just curious. My home life wasn't so great. I've spent a few weeks at Ron's and a wizards house is really interesting."

"Oh…" Neville seemed to calm a bit. "Oh, the house is great. It's my parents. Three stories, Gran lives mostly on the second floor, but my bedroom and a library is on the top floor, as well two spare rooms. But the best bit is the greenhouse!" He grinned.

"Of course! Herbology." Harry grinned back, and image of Neville in an indoor Amazon in his mind.

"Gran's Dad started the collection, it's actually bigger than the house now, although there is a whole level which is mostly taken over by devils snare." Neville grinned, "The heating broke. Without magic in the holidays I can't do much about trimming it, so we've just locked it off for now."

"Levels? How do you have levels in a greenhouse?" Harry asked.

"Magic." Said Neville, rolling his eyes.

"Right, right… that stuff." Harry laughed. "It sounds really cool."

"Yeah, it is. You should come over some time. Maybe Christmas even?"

"Yeah, that would be good. I'd invite you over but my Aunt and Uncle would have a fit." Harry sighed.

"Right. They're muggles aren't they?" Neville asked.

"Yeah. They don't really like magic." Harry shrugged.

"How does that work?" asked Neville, but Harry was saved from answering as the food disappeared and Dumbledore stood up to make his speech. Harry wasn't sure how he would have answered. 'Not very well' would have been the truth, but he didn't like to share his home life. Ron, Fred and George were the only ones who had an inkling of an idea, after breaking him out in second year, but they'd thankfully never mentioned it.

Dumbledore was on his usual rant (forbidden forest: forbidden. Filch's list of doom), when a new bit caught his attention.

"It also pains me to tell you that the inter-house Quidditch competition has been cancelled this year."

"WHAT!?" Harry yelled, and he wasn't the only one. Oliver Wood had actually fallen off the bench.

"This is due to another event starting in October, which I'm sure you will enjoy. It is my pleasure to announce that Hogwarts…"

But at that moment there was a loud interruption. Looking Back Harry had to wonder if the timing had been planned. At the same time as loud rumble of thunder from the raging storm the doors burst open revealing a very scary looking man. Pirate was Harry's first thought. He had a long dark cloak on, still dripping from the rain, not quite hiding the bottom of one wooden leg. Leaning on a tall crooked staff, and his wooden leg clunking along the stone floor, his face came into light. Under fine, wet, brown hair was a face missing various parts. A chunk of his nose was missing and his face was littered with scars, but the creepiest thing was one of his eyes. It was mechanical and seemed to have a mind of it's own, spinning all around the room while its clear blue counterpart stared straight on ahead.

The man made his way through the silent hall up to Dumbledore, who shook his hand and said some quite words which Harry couldn't catch, before sitting down to a full plate of food. He stabbed a sausage with a knife from his pocket, rather than off the table, sniffed it carefully, then dug in.

"May I present our new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Moody." Said Dumbledore smiling.

"Moody!" Said Ron in a harsh whisper, "That's Mad-Eye, the one dad went to see this morning." He said, whisper getting louder. Fortunatly he wasn't the only one as Harry couldn't help calling the man Mad-Eye might be the last thing you did.

As only Dumbledore and Hagrid seemed to come out of their trance enough to applaud the new teacher, he continued on.

"As I was saying, it is my pleasure to announce that Hogwarts will be hosting the Tri-Wizard Tournament this year." This quickly gained everyone's attention.

"YOU'RE JOKING?" Fred yelled, breaking the tension in the room as a few people laughed.

"No Mr. Weasley, I shall have to leave the jokes to you." Dumbledore chuckled. "Although I did hear an excellent one over the holidays about a troll, a hag and a…" Professor McGonagall coughed loudly and Dumbledore trailed off.

"Ah yes, never mind. The Tri-Wizard Tournament has not been held in over a century, so we are quite excited. A few of you might know a little on how it's run, so bare with me for a few moments.

The Tournament is a competition between the three premier schools in Europe: Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, and Drumstrang. One champion is selected from each school to compete in three magical tasks. The schools take it in turn to host the Tournament, and it was considered an excellent way of establishing ties between the youth of different nationalities – that is, until the death toll mounted so high that the tournament was discontinued."

"Death toll?" Hermione whispered.

Harry groaned as everyone else cheered. _What's the bet I get caught up in this_? He thought grumpily. _Just one normal year would be nice_. Everyone else, however, seemed more than pleased about hosting the event.

Dumbledore continued, "As such the three schools have been working together with their governments to ensure that the return of the tournament will be a much safer event, with no students finding themselves in mortal danger. Beauxbaton and Drumstrang will be arriving in October, with the champions being selected by an impartial judge on Halloween. The prize is eternal glory for your school, along with a more physical element of a thousand Galleons prize money."

"I'm going for it!" Fred whispered loudly, and didn't seem to be the only one thinking the same thing. Harry spent a short moment picturing himself standing accepting the prize, his school cheering for something he actually had a say in. Harry Potter, Tournament Champion, as opposed to Harry Potter, Boy-who-lived. It was intriguing, however the thought was soon interrupted by the more practical part of his brain, picturing the Basalisk and Dementors, as well as a good dose of giant chess sets and Devil's snare. _Maybe not_. Harry thought. There was also Sirius to consider. He had promised himself to do anything he could to help, which was going to involve a lot of research. He'd also promised himself to improve his grades this year, in the hope his exams wouldn't be interrupted by the more violent end of term he was getting used to. Fortunately the choice was taken away from him.

"As eager as I'm sure you all are to bring the Tri-Wizard Cup to Hogwarts, The heads of the three schools, along with the Ministry, have agreed to put a limit on the age of those entering. You must be of age- that is seventeen, in order to enter."

This announcement was not met with as much cheer, as everyone underage made loud complaints, the twins especially.

"This is for your own safety," Dumbledore continued over the racket, "and I will be personally ensuring that no one under age gives their name to the impartial judge. This tournament is not to be taken lightly, and will involve great skill and risk to the champion.

The delegations from Beauxbaton and Drumstrang will be staying with us from October through the duration of the tournament, and I know that you will extend every courtesy to our foreign guests while they are here, as well as you whole-hearted support for the Hogwarts champion. More news will go up on your in-house notice boards.

You must all be quite exhausted, so off to bed with you. Chop! Chop!"


	4. Chapter 4

Just in case you didn't get the warning in the title - still not the fabulous JKR! But I do love playing with her plot and characters. Sticking rather close at the moment (you should recognise quite a few direct quotes - SHE OWNS ALL!) and we are all suitably jealous. Anyway, it will begin to drift further as we go on. Wish me luck!

* * *

Dumbledore sat back down again and began talking to Professor Moody, as everyone fought their way to the common room. Harry found himself walking with the twins.

"They can't do that! We only miss out on the age limit by…

"…A few months, and the champions…"

"Will get to do all sorts of stuff you normally…"

"Aren't allowed. Not to mention a thousand galleons." The twins bounced.

"Yeah… a thousand Galleons…" Ron was practically drooling.

They then went on to discuss the judge, and debate the possibilities of getting past him or her, and the plausibility of using aging potion or disguises.

"Will you go for it Harry? When we figure out how to get past the judge." One of the twins asked.

"I would." Ron interrupted, "A thousand Galleons!"

"People have died!" Hermione tried again.

"I probably don't know enough." Sighed Neville, "I bet my Gran would want me to, I'm just glad – Oof!" Naville had sunk his foot through one of the trick stairs again. Harry and one of the twins stopped to pull him out.

"Will you give it a go though Harry? I bet the judge couldn't pass up on you." The twin tried again. Harry was pretty sure it was George.

"Bloody hell Neville, you need a map with alarms!" Harry grinned, whacking Neville on the back. Which reminded him of the Marauders.

"If you haven't noticed guys," Harry answered, "I spend most of my time trying to keep out of trouble, not getting into it." Ron rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, but it usually finds you. I bet if you put your name in you'll get it."

"Which would be typical. I don't want it." Harry glared back. The group went back into discussion again, but the more they talked about it, the more Harry got annoyed. As they made their way to the common room there was a bit of a line up to get through the portrait.

"Does this map have the passwords as well?" Neville grinned, sensing Harry's wish for a change of topic, "I've already forgotten it and I'm too afraid to write it down again after last year."

"Afraid not Neville. But that reminds me… Hey Fred! George! Wait up." Harry whacked Neville lightly on the back again before heading to find the twins.

The common room was rather loud and busy while every one tried to catch up with everyone else's holidays. Harry cornered the twins with Lee Jorden, pouring over a bit of parchment.

"Hey guys, already found a replacement?" Harry grinned, pointing to the bit of parchment. This gave them time to put it away before he could see it (although he was fairly sure he knew what it was anyway), but also allowed him to suss out how much Lee knew.

"Never that." Said a twin.

"We tried a few things." Said the other.

"Never so successful." Said the first. Lee Jordan was looking over curiously, which made up Harry's mind. The twins could share later if they wanted to.

"Can I borrow a minute of your time?" Harry asked the twins.

"Sure. Bugger off Lee." George said, but grinning with no mean streak. Lee muttered cruelties under his breath, but left to catch up with some of his year mates nonetheless.

"Actually, maybe somewhere a bit quieter?" Harry pushed.

"Oh come on then." They each grabbed an arm and frog marched him up the boys tower, not stopping when Ron called out from Harry's level.

"Oi! Where are you off to?" He demanded sticking his head out the door.

"I'll tell you later" Harry said, turning, and as a result tripping on the stair. Fred and George just kept dragging, eventually dumping him unceremoniously on an extra squishy bed.

"Wow, is it just the three of you in here?" Said Harry, distracted by the room. It was quite different to their dorm, with only three beds there was a lot more room, although the cupboards looked a bit more damaged.

"Yes well the war was at it's peak…"

"When mumsie and popsie were at it…"

"Most people were too worried about their current family…"

"Instead of adding to it." The twins bounced, then in unison, "Stop stalling."

"Right sorry. Can anyone hear us?" Harry asked, pointing to the open door. The twins just laughed.

"Privacy charms."

"One of the first things we learnt." They grinned.

"Excellent. Might have to get you to show me. Anyway, about the Marauders…" The twins looked on hopefully and all of a sudden Harry became rather shy. He hadn't thought this through, being Prong's son, and Padfoot's Godson – what it might mean to the twins. But just as the twins were getting impatient Harry remembered them marching him down the halls in second year, announcing the 'heir of Slytherin, coming through' at the top of their voices. Everybody else had been wary of him, even his two best friends, but to the twins it was a giant joke. They had never for a moment believed it could be him. Harry made up his mind.

"I know who they are. Actually, I'm related to them." He said calmly. The response was not calm.

"WHAT?!" George yelled. Fred fell off the opposite bed. Harry didn't know what to say, but all of a sudden Fred regained his voice.

"Of course you are, it all makes sense." He said, looking across at his twin, who seemed to gain the understanding.

"Ooooh. It does."

"Does it?" Harry said, now confused.

"Of course. Who does trouble always find?"

"Yeah, not to mention a large number of detentions…"

"I hear you've broken into the potions store room…"

"Not to mention running into those nasty spiders in the forest…"

"Flew a car to school…"

"Only one to make it past Fluffy…"

"Yeah, we tried for weeks…"

"Weren't the only ones…"

"Not to mention the other stuff down there…"

"There was that Bludger too…"

"And the house-elf that came with it…"

"We really should have seen this earlier, brother dearest."

"Yes, I'm feeling a bit silly…"

"Rather stumped…"

"Completely stupid…"

"Silly, stumped and stupid." They said in unison "Now spill."

Harry couldn't help but laugh. "Well that went over better than expected. Now for the next one… You remember Professor Lupin?" Harry asked, trying to keep a straight face. The twin's stared across at each other jaws dropped. In unison their palms hit their faces.

"No way."

"We've actually…"

"Met one!"

Than silence for a minute before, "MOONY!" They yelled in unison. Harry grinned, and began the tale of Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs.

It was almost an hour later that Harry made it back to the dorm finding only Neville awake. The twins had been in uproar, mostly because Harry knew first, but also because they now knew which of Filch's files to try and break into to get to information on the Marauders pranks. The explanation of their Animagus ability had drawn the most respect from the Twins, not only their complete support from their friend, but because it was impressed upon them how much the ability to change to an animal at will would help with pranks. They had there and then decided to make it one of their new projects. Harry had to admit he'd done a tiny bit of research over the holidays, but hadn't had access to many books. But if the twins were interested Harry was certainly in, and pointed out that it had certainly helped Padfoot escape from an unfair law, and he felt if there was anybody he knew who was likely to get unfairly involved in the law, it was the twins, with a prank gone wrong. This had the added bonus of the twins promising to help look out for Sirius. While they didn't completely understand Harry's need for a Godfather, they felt they more than owed it to their unknowing mentors. They did take Peter's betrayal rather hard, thought this, naturally, pleased Harry quite a lot.

Harry had found his pajamas neatly folded on his bed, a house-elf had no doubt put them there. Harry hadn't missed Hermione's glares at the common room fires, and mutters of 'slave labor'. Nonetheless, he was quite pleased to be able to leave the unpacking until a later time. He found Neville sitting on the window sill staring out at the raging storm.

"Penny for them?" Harry asked, receiving a blank look from Neville. "Right, sorry, Knut for them?" Both boys laughed, and Dean grunted and rolled over.

"You two still up?" He complained, drawing his blinds shut. After a few moments of quiet Neville turned back to the sky. Harry didn't think he was going to answer when Neville's quiet whisper came, "Gran's always going on about upholding the family honor. Even if I could enter I don't think I'd have any luck."

"I'd pick you." Said Harry. Neville snorted.

"You'd be an idiot. I don't have any skills." Harry considered him for a bit.

"I don't feel like I do either. But I've been rather… Lucky, and had a bit of practice."

"I wish I had." Neville groaned.

"No Neville, you don't." Said Harry suddenly harsh.

"Right. Sorry Harry." Neville back-pedaled fast.

"No, it's fine. Everyone goes on about my great adventures. Just like my scar. It's great… so long as you weren't there."

"Do you miss them?" Neville asked, suddenly looking across at Harry. The question caught him by surprise. Not many people thought about it. It took Harry a moment to think of his answer.

"Not as much as I should. I used to. Before Hogwarts, but now I'm not alone, so it doesn't come up much."

"What about your relatives? You weren't alone then either." Said Neville. Harry frowned. Normally he was quite good at keeping out of these conversations. He considered his answer very carefully.

"My life before Hogwarts… It wasn't what everybody thought." Said Harry, thinking of all the books that had been written - the spoilt little prince, living to be a hero. _Definitely not what people thought_.

"Oh." Was Neville's quiet response. Harry decided to run with what he had while he could.

"Night Neville." He said, lying down and turning away from the window.


	5. Chapter 5

The next day didn't start off well. Ron and Hermione were arguing already at breakfast, Hermione already on her soap box about elf rights. Then they got their timetables for the year, starting off with Herbology, which was fine, but then Care of magical creatures with the Slytherins, which didn't bode well, only to be topped off by Divination.

"Urgh! I hate Trelawney!" He groaned.

"Not looking forward to her predicting your death huh?" Ron grinned.

"You should have dropped it, like me." Said Hermione snidely. Harry just groaned more.

"I should of. I wish I still could."

"You should try ruins with me." Neville grinned, "Are you guys ready for Herbology?"

"No need to be so cheerful." Harry groaned, but got up to follow Neville to the greenhouses.

"Well, at least we are outside for most of the day." Said Ron, putting on a brave front. This didn't last long, and even Neville had begun to droop after an entire lesson squeezing the Pus out of Bubotubers boils. It was completely disgusting, and also a tiny bit strangely satisfying (though Harry would never admit it outloud), but it become rather dull after the first ten minutes. The lesson went for just under an hour.

Nobody's mood improved after Care of Magical Creatures. Hagrid had taken on a new batch of creatures called Blast-Ended-Skrewts. The general consensus was that they were the most disgusting creatures any of them had ever seen. They looked like deformed lobsters with no shell, all slime and legs, with either stingers or suckers (of blood), and letting of small explosions pushing them forward in an unexpected jerk. Even Hermione, who defended them for Hagrid when Malfoy complained, had to admit they were disgusting and with no foreseen use, should be stamped out with all possible haste.

"You lot look cheerful" Padma Patil came over to the table with two Ravenclaw friends, "Mum." She added, putting a letter down on the table. Parvati just grunted.

"Herbology." Parvarti groaned.

"I thought you liked Herbology?" said Padma.

"Bubotubers." Parvarti explained.

"Ew."

"Then Care of Magical Creatures."

"Ah. I have that next."

"Take your Dragon-hide gloves." Padma grinned.

"Oh goodie." Padma deadpanned, walking back to the Ravenclaw table. Harry caught Parvarti's eye and grinned.

"Urgh!" Lavender interrupted, staring with Horror across the table. Harry, being immune to Ron's table manners was given a severe shock, turning to find Hermione shoveling her food down at an alarming rate.

"I thought you were starving yourself? Change of heart?" Ron demanded.

"Yes and No. I've decided there are better ways to go about this." She said, clearing her plate, and getting up to leave.

"Where are you going?" Ron demanded in an even more outraged tone.

"Library." She smiled, running from the room.

"We don't even have homework yet!" Ron called. Harry looked at the table to find the dishes of the day were German sausages and some sort of savory custard. Normally quite good choices, but after today's lessons he decided the Library might be a better option.

"Actually, I'll go too." He said, pushing his plate away. Fortunately he managed his escape while Ron sat there in shock.

"See you in class!" Harry yelled over his shoulder.

Still mildly amused at the look of shock and horror on his best mates face Harry made it into the Library, ignoring Madam Prince's wary glares he made his way over to Hermione's table, which was already piled high with thick nasty-looking books. Harry put his hand on her shoulder lightly to let her know she was there. Hermione almost jumped through her skin.

"Harry!" She whispered as loudly as she dared. Harry just grinned.

"Before you get all excited I'm not here to support your cause… but I have some stuff I'd like to look up, and I'm happy to support you with company." He smiled.

"Harry. I've barely begun and there is already-" She began in a fierce whisper.

"That's fine Hermione, but I have bigger fish to fry." He interrupted, but seeing the hurt look on her face braved his way on. "I'm sorry, and I know it's possibly" he ignored her angry snort, "horrible, but my Godfathers on the run from the law and that's more important to me at the moment. I'll happily listen to the run-down when you give it to Ron later."

"Humph!" Hermione rolled her eyes, but went back to reading. Harry went off in search of books on law and Animagi. The second category proved rather easy, as it was a topic covered from fifth year up in Transfiguration, it would only be the books on how to actually attempt it that would be hard. The law books proved beyond him.

Biting the bullet, Harry did the unthinkable.

"Erm, Madam Prince?" Harry asked tentatively.

"Yes?" She asked with a hard stare, one that would make Snape jealous. Harry met the stare and, trying not to gulp to audibly went for it.

"Could you help me find some books please?" Harry asked. He even managed not to tangle all over his words.

Madam Prince stared across her desk at the boy with nothing giving her face away. Harry tried not to be worried. Madam Prince, despite being an excellent Librarian, in the case of running a quite, well ordered Library of books, did not do children. If your own books were in anything less than pristine condition, then the Lady of the Library was not even the tiniest bit approachable. She had been known to ban students for life, regardless of assignments needed, and her detentions had you hand-dusting every book individually. She had the same sort of presence as Snape or McGonagall, and unless you were a straight O student, you stayed out of her way and respected her rules.

But Harry didn't want the books for a mere grade. Harry needed to help his Godfather. He needed it for Sirius, and (he grudgingly admitted to himself) he needed it for himself as well.

Madam Prince seemed to consider Harry very carefully, but, after a few tense moments gave a small nod.

"I will try. What is it you need?"

Harry let out a breath he wasn't aware he had been holding. "Thank you. I'm not really sure, but books on Law." He wasn't sure whom could be trusted, so he didn't want to give too much away. "Charges for murdering an individual, innocent bystanders, and being involved in letting information out that would attain to someone's death." Harry finished, still unaware if he'd given too much away.

"Certainly Mr. Potter. May I ask why you are interested in such topics?" Madam Prince said, already starting out for the magical law-enforcement shelves.

"You may," Returned Harry, "But I'm not sure you'll get a full answer." From the corner of his eye he saw her eyebrows go up, but no other response. It had been the right answer then. Harry let out another small sigh. "If I'm to get caught up in all this war, which we all know I will be, I want to know what's coming." It wasn't quite the truth, but it was all he was willing for now. He didn't want too many people to know. He mainly didn't want Dumbledore to know, as he was sure he was in contact with Sirius as well, and he didn't want to get any hopes up.

Madam Prince didn't make any further comment, and merely raised one eyebrow at the extensive pile of books Harry was checking out.

"I do trust you are aware that there are penalties for keeping books past the two-week limit? Mr. Potter."

"Yes. They'll all be back." He said, nodding. To be fair, most of the Transfiguration ones he would only be looking at small sections, and he was going to have help. Telling her he was going to hand some of her precious books over to none other than the Weasley twins would hardly be endearing however, so he kept his peace.

"Harry?" Hermione had been so absorbed in her research that she didn't notice Harry's massive piles of books until her wand buzzed on the desk – her alarm set for ten minutes before class.

"Yes Hermione? Hmm… I don't suppose you know any good spells to help with this?" Harry asked, trying to balance all the books on one another. Hermione gave a quick, complicated flick of her wand and muttered under her breath.

"You'll have to teach me that." Harry grinned, his pile now much lighter and much more stable.

"You're going to be late."

"Yes. But then I'll probably only miss my death reading, and lets face it, there will be a few of those." Harry sighed, wondering again why he had taken the subject.

"Hardly an excuse for missing the first lesson of the year, Mr. Potter." Came an abrupt voice from directly behind them. Hermione dropped her pile of books.

"No sir." Harry said calmly, trying to levitate his pile long enough to help Hermione. Mad-Eye Moody waved his wand over the floor and Hermione's books formed a neat pile and levitated in front of her.

"Thank you professor." Said Hermione blushing.

"I'll tell her we had a meeting. Better yet, tell her we knew she would have foretold of the meeting."

And with that, he turned and disappeared down a side corridor.

"Well that was embarrassing." Said Hermione mildly.

"Certainly rather odd. I think I'm looking forward to our first defence class." Harry frowned. Hermione just sighed.

"Come on, you still have to make it all the way over to the tower. I'm unsure if you should trust a teacher who doesn't know you but is bending the rules already."

"Oh I have no intention of doing so." Harry agreed.

Fortunately, with the aid of his father's map he had enough shortcuts to arrive only a few minutes after class, getting a simple "Ah, Mr. Potter in your preoccupation you have arrived late… not to be a play on words of course, but my inner eye is not seeing a long life..." She said loud enough for every boy in the class to moan, the quieter (but still loud enough for at least the front of the class) "Such a waste… so young." and then launched in to the program for the year.

"My dears, it is time for us to consider the starts," she said. At which point Harry tuned out. They were considering the stars in astronomy, predictions of the future included, and anything he learnt here would have to be covered up with added in predictions of his own (preferably horrible) demise. He had hoped it would be better this year, however he hadn't even been in the lesson a whole minute before it was made abundantly clear that it would not. Sinking into the beanbag, which was currently spilling the little white beans everywhere, Harry resigned himself to the fact that he would spend the majority of the lesson trying to charm those beans to walk themselves straight back into the bag. This caught the attention of Ron and Dean, who were sharing their table, and soon the three boys were contentedly practicing making the beans waltz.

It shouldn't bother him so much… at least, Harry felt it shouldn't. After all last year he'd found the lesson's mostly amusing. Something had changed in him, when Sirius had offered a home. For a brief moment, Harry had been about to be rescued, only to have it snatched away again, and damn it, Harry wasn't going to let it go without fighting.

Even if Trelawney's prediction had been true last year, and Dumbledore had said he believed she had had one other. It didn't mean she wasn't still an old fraud like Hermione had said, and it didn't mean he was going to die, or that 'what h feared was going to come to pass'. Sirius was not going to get caught. Harry was making sure of that.

Slowly Harry was overpowered by the strong perfumed fire, and the comfortable beanbag. His thoughts drifted as he stared mindlessly at Dean and Ron racing the beans around the floor. _I wonder what her other prophecy was_. Thought Harry, as the racing beans slowly became less and less clear…

"HARRY!" Ron poked Harry's ribs hard.

"What?" Said Harry, aware that the whole class was watching him.

"I was saying, my dear how you were always destined to lead a troubled life. Born under the baleful influence of Saturn." Professor Trelawney, a feint annoyance showing through in her normally misty voice.

"I'm sorry?" Harry said, trying to shake the edges of sleep from his mind.

"Saturn my dear… Your dark hair… your mean stature… a tradgic life of which you are condemned… I am right in saying that you were born, in the depths of ice?" She had returned to her misty self.

"Come again?" Harry tried, really, very hard, not to be rude in tone.

"You were born mid-winter." She said, as if revealing a greavestone. Harry had had enough, Hermione had the right idea.

"I was born in July."

Ron hastily turned his snort into a hacking cough. Trelawney just drifted back across the room to Lavender and Paravati. The two girls were thrilled, and there was a large amount of homework. A full star chart, full of nasty calculations, from the exact moment of their birth, along with a detailed analysis of what this meant for them in respect to the planetary alignment for the coming month.

"I can't believe this."

"She was just snotty because she got your birthday wrong."

"I think it's more likely it was your charming comment about seeing Lavenders Behind." Harry snorted.

"I don't know who it was, but I've got three Saturn's, and only one of them with moons."

"Ah…" said Ron in a mystic voice, "Three Saturn's brings forth three powers that be, but only one will hold all the destinies."

"Ew, Ron, that was actually pretty good. Three schools and all. Mind if I use it?"

"Go ahead Dean." Harry just sniggered, looking up in time to catch Hermione's cheerful arrival.

"Lot's of homework? Professor Vector didn't give us any."

They had all reached the entrance hall by this stage, everyone swarming for dinner.

"Hey Weasley! Weasley!" Malfoy called out, causing an immediate circle to appear around the two groups. Crabbe and Goyle cracking their knuckles, all three of them looking rather pleased.

"Your family's famous Weasley!"

"What do you want Malfoy?" Ron spat.

"Just letting you know of your fame. Your father's in the paper again." Said Malfoy pulling it out.

"FUTHER MISTAKES AT THE MINISTRY OF MAGIC

Rita Skeeter uncovered again that the ministry is still floundering for the troubles, after trouble at the Quidditch World Cup, and a still-missing witch from a high-ranking position within the ministry, they have taken another blow, coming in the form on Arnold Weasley, head of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office."

"Look at that, they can't even get his worthless name right." Malfoy smirked, before continuing.

"Mr. Arnold Weasley, charged two year ago with possession of a flying car, was yesterday involved with a quarrel involving muggle-Aurors ('policeman'), involving exploding trashcans set about by none other than ex-Auror 'Mad-Eye' Moody, who retired from the ministry without the ability to tell a smile from an attempt at the unforgivables. Mr. Weasley found that once again, ex-Auror Moody had called a false alarm and found it necessary to involve a large portion of memory modification charms, barely managing to scrape through an embarrassing affair which the ministry should wonder at being involved with."

"And look here," He said, holding the paper up, "There's a picture of your parents outside their… Oh, I'm sorry, do you call that thing a house?" Malfoy was grinning now, Rom being held back by Dean and Hermione.

"Your mother could do with a bit of weight loss, she wouldn't want to increase the chances of being perceived as dumpy, don't you think?"

"Oh get stuffed Malfoy." Harry sneered.

"Oh that's right, you practically live with them don't you Potter? Haven't got a better home to go to? So tell me, is she really that Fat, or is it just the photo?"

Hermione now had to put a silencing charm on Ron, but Harry just turned and glared at Malfoy.

"You know your mother Malfoy? Has she always looked that ugly, had that pained look on her face like their was something disgusting in the room… or is that just normal behavior because you were there?" Harry said rolling his eyes and turning back to help restrain Ron.

"You can't talk about my mother like that!" Malfoy yelled.

BANG!

Harry spun back around to find a small, white ferret on the ground. It didn't stay there for long though.

"That's not how we play laddie." Said a calm voice, as the ferret bounced from the stone flagstones, to the wall, against a suit of armor…

"Did he get you?" Mad-Eye asked a surprisingly calm Harry.

"Missed." Was all Harry could get out, it having dawned on him what… or rather who, the ferret was.

"LEAVE IT!" Mad-Eye yelled, making everyone jump again.

"Sorry?" Harry was now completely confused.

"Not you. Him." Mad-Eye said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder, magical eye focused on the back of his head.

"Oh I have got to get one of them." Harry said under his breath, just loud enough for him and Mad-Eye to catch. Mad-Eye just laughed.

"Be willing to give another up?" Mad-Eye growled. Harry shrugged.

"I can't see all that well anyway."

"OI!" Mad-Eye yelled again, making everyone jump. Harry focused his attention back to the ferret, who had been trying to slink away. Moody the proceeded to give it his full attention, bouncing it up and down the hall.

"Moody?" Professor McGonagal arrived, a large pile of books in her arms. "What on earth are you doing.

"Teaching." Said Mad-Eye, returning to the vocal lessons on ettiquite.

"Teach-… is that a **student**?!" McGonagall demanded, her neat pile of books falling from her hands to get to her wand. She already knew the answer.

_Madam Prince won't be letting you back in anytime soon._ Though Harry idly, watching McGonagall try and reign one in over Mad-Eye, and fail, as Mad-Eye promised to speak to Malfoy (now transformed back and groaning on the floor)'s head of house. Now that was an interview Harry would like to be a big on the wall for. The best bit hadn't even come yet.

"My father will hear-…" Malfoy started.

"Oh Yeah?" Mad-Eye interrupted, then going on about 'old friends' and telling Lucius he was 'keeping an eye on' Draco.

Harry thought Ron had the best understanding of the situation. "Don't talk to me." Ron said, as they all sat down for dinner. He was staring straight ahead but seemed to get the un-asked question. "Because I am trying to embed that in my brain forever. Malfoy the amazing bouncing ferret."


	6. Chapter 6

"Moody. How cool is he?" Fred said, dropping down in the seat next to Harry. George dropped down on the other side.

"We just had him. Never had a lesson like it."

"What was he like?"

"He knows." Joined Lee Jordon.

"Ah." Said Harry nodding.

"Knows what?" Demanded Ron, food still in his open mouth. Hermione paused in her rushed eating to shovel in some more food.

"You know. He _knows_."

"Knows what?" said Ron, sounding exasperated. The twins rolled their eyes.

"Know what it's like."

"Knows what what's like?"

"Fighting the Dark arts." Hermione explained between mouthfuls of pasta. "Are you coming Harry?" She asked a few minutes later, having somehow already finished a full meal.

"You know, the elves are probably going to take offence at how little respect you're giving their carefully prepared meals." Neville said, sitting down across from Harry. Completely unused to Neville on the offence Hermione didn't know how to respond. Grinning, Harry cut in.

"Nah, I've got the books out I need, I'm just taking notes from a few sections in most of them. Could you take these back for me?" He pulled out five of the Transfiguration texts.

Hermione raised her brows, but took the books, only sending Neville a small glare, before heading off to the Library.

"We haven't had Transfiguration yet." Neville noted. Harry turned to look at him, really look at him. Neville was usually painfully shy, he never spoke up in class, and he didn't really have any close friends except two girls in Hufflepuff in Herbology. This was the third day running which he'd interacted a lot with Harry.

"You've gone and got yourself involved with Hermione," Harry teased shaking his head, "watch out or you'll be wearing 'SPEW' badges."

"What are spew badges?" Neville asked looking decidedly wary, much more in line with Harry's expectations of his character.

"trust me, avoid knowing for as long as possible." He laughed.

"Hey Fred, did you bring those notes on the duplication spell?" Harry asked, pulling out his notes on Animagi, carefully concealed under a boring essay from the twins fourth year.

"Here, _Duo amno_." Fred waved his wand in a circle and a cross. Two copies appeared underneath the pile of notes.

"Excellent." Harry passed the 'originals' back to Fred, who passed them to George, who somehow put them into a pocket they shouldn't have fit in.

"Man, I am seriously going to need to start a list of spells to learn off you two." Harry sighed.

Ron snorted, "What could you learn off them?"

"Heaps." Harry frowned.

"But they fail everything!" He complained.

"No faith in us." George shook his head.

"None at all." Fred agreed.

"Just because we don't do homework–"

"Doesn't mean we don't learn."

"Do you get on with Madam Prince?" Harry asked suddenly. The twins grinned.

"Of course."

Moody made an entrance at this point, arguing loudly with Filch. Ron dove into his bag for his schedule. "Damn, we don't have DADA until Thursday." He sighed disappointed.

The next two days passed uneventfully, unless you count Neville blowing up a cauldron in potions and earning himself and Harry, who had been sitting three people away, two detentions. Neville apologized numerous times, but Harry just brushed him off.

"Don't worry about it, he's been in a foul mood all week. Besides, he never writes out full instructions on the board, it only said 'crush the burdy roots', not crush each burdy root individually then mix the juices in a separate bowl'. He actually does it on purpose." Neville's jaw dropped and Dean, Ron and Seamus turned to stare at Harry.

"Where did you get that?" Seamus demanded.

"it's in the textbook." Hermione said snootily, arriving behind the boys and making them jump.

"_THIS_ is why you never ruin your potions!" Dean glared at her.

She sniffed. "it's not my fault none of you read the text."

"But that's why he writes it on the board!" Ron yelled. Hermione just shrugged, pulling out the new defense textbook. Not having got a reaction from Hermione Ron turned on Harry. "And why didn't you tell us!"

"I only found out yesterday, the twins told me." He turned back to Neville, ignoring Ron's spluttering about the twins only sharing with family that 'wasn't blood', "It doesn't help that you start out so nervous in his classes too."

Neville sighed and looked down. "You saw my boggart."

Harry nodded. "Maybe…" Harry trailed off.

"What?"

Harry leaned in and dropped his voice "Well, I don't know how you'd get any, but maybe you should take a small dose of calming potion before each lesson."

"Calming potion is addictive." Neville said unsurely.

"Yes, but how often do you end up in the hospital wing because of an exploded potion."

"I'm hopeless." He moaned.

Harry shook his head. "It can only be Snape, I was talking to the twins about it and Herbology is about 60% of potions. You should be great at it." Neville just made a non-comittal noise.

"If you're unsure go see Madam Pomphrey about it." Neville blanched. Noting his look Harry continued. "Come on, we've still got twenty minutes before class, I'll come with you."

The other Gryffindors were already making their way to line up for DADA, being very keen for it, but Harry dragged Neville off to the hospital wing. Madam Pomphrey started off with a grumpy 'You again Potter. What is it this time?' but she did listen to Harry's arguments. Neville stood quietly to the side, only adding in that he was interested, but only if it wasn't dangerous. After much discussion, Neville decided to give it a trial run for a month, hoping that he could gain some more confidence after a few good lessons, and give it up if it didn't work. The argument had gone out of him when Pomphrey told him it would take a year of potions before he'd get addicted. They were walking quietly back to class when Neville spoke up.

"Why are you helping me?"

The question completely caught Harry off guard. He immediately thought _why shouldn't I?_ but that wasn't what he was being asked.

"More to the point, why didn't I before?" Harry mused. Neville blushed.

"That's not what I meant."

"No, but I should have. I guess… I spent my pre-Hogwarts life at the bottom of the food chain, so coming to Hogwarts I was just happy to cruise along anywhere but the bottom." Harry paused, "Sorry." It got a little awkward, but before the conversation could continue they turned the corner just in time to join the end of the line leading into DADA.

"Nice timing." Neville commented, however they weren't last. Right as they entered the door Hermione came running and slid in behind them.

"Been in the–"

"Library." Harry winked. Hermione just rolled her eyes and took a seat with the two boys.

Professor Moody turned up only a few minutes later, and much to Ron's joy, told them to put away their copies of _The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection_. In Harry's experience any DADA class that started without the text-books was usually good. This opinion was followed up, as Moody didn't give any sign of difference when he reached 'Harry Potter' on the roll, something both Professor Sprout and Flitwick still did, four years later. It was a little daunting however as he followed the names down the list with his regular eye, whilst the mechanical one swiveled around the room focusing on each person. Harry still wasn't sure about the eye, it would have to throw off balance at least a little, but definitely had advantages.

"Right then, I've been in correspondence with your one available remaining Professor, I do hope you'll choose to do away with me in a less perminant manner." He joked, drawing a laugh from most of the class, Harry couldn't help but twitch just a little. _Merlin I hope this one isn't out to get me too_, he couldn't help but think. "Anyway, First year was jinxs and spell categories I believe, then second year was minor curses, which Lupin completely covered, Merlin only knows what Albus was thinking hiring Lockheart, and last year you covered boggarts, red caps, hinkypunks, grindylows, Kappas and werewolves, is that correct?"

There were some vague nods around the room. "Hmm, I think I'll give you a list in one of the next lessons on what you should have covered up until now for you to go over on your own. This year however I'll be bringing you up to scratch on curses, as you are behind– very behind. Now, I've got one year to teach you Dark–"

"What, you're not staying?" Ron asked. Moody's magical, mechanical eye spun around to focus on him.

"Arthur Weasley's son yes?" Moody smiled for the first time. It streatched all the scars on his face, making him look even more battle-worn, but everyone seemed to let out a breath to know that he did. "Good man, Arthur. Got me out of a tight spot just the other day. Yes, just the one year as a favor to the old man." He clapped his hands together. Hermione bristled at the description of their Headmaster, but Harry thought Dumbledore probably wouldn't mind in the least.

"Now, I'm supposed to just stick to counter-curses, but me and Dumbledore have decided that there is not point knowing a counter to something if you don't recognize the spell, so I'll be covering some Dark curses first. Curses come in different strengths, with different penalties for their severity. A Dark wizard isn't going to come up to you and politely tell you what they are about to do. You need to be watching for it, alert and ready. You need to be prepared, and you need to _put that away Miss Brown_."

Lavender jumped in her seat and blushed, she had been showing Parvati her Divination homework under the desk, however Moody's eye wasn't obstructed in the least.

"So, shall we start at the top?" He asked, magical eye still fixed on the two blushing girls. "Can anyone tell me which curses are most heavily penalized by the ministry?"

Surprisingly Hermione's hand wasn't first in the air. Quite a few hands went up, including Ron and Neville. _Just another reason I should be looking up wizarding laws. I haven't a clue._ Harry thought, glancing down at his bookbag packed full with Library books. Completely different to last year, where it was filled with his cloak and some treats.

"Weasley."

"Um, I think there's three… one of them is called the _imperius_ or something. Gives you control over another's actions." Ron stated nervously.

"Yes, the ministry had many problems with that one, so your dad would know." Moody pulled a glass jar with three live spiders out of his desk, causing Ron to shift his chair back a little.

"Now Dumbledore has given us special permissions in this class, but I do need to remind you that it is highly illegal to use the curses we will be covering all term, and for these three you will earn yourself a one-way ticket to Azkaban if you decided to try one out on a human being." Pointing his wand into the jar he picked out one spider. "_Imperio_."

Suddenly the spider started tap-dancing across the jar, then leaped out onto the desk to do an acrobatic circus act. Everyone in the room started giggling, making Moody frown.

"Think it's funny do you?" He flicked his wand and the spider flew at Dean, who was sitting nest to Ron. "I could make it jump down your throat," Ron clamped his jaw shut audibly. "Or jump out the window," the spider went spinning across the room to the window. "Drown itself, or attack the other two." He let the spider off landing it neatly back in the jar. It shrunk itself into the corner. Everyone had stopped laughing and were looking about uncomfortably.

"Hmm, not so funny is it? The ministry used to have a fine time trying to work out who was being controlled, and who was acting of their own will." Harry couldn't help but wonder just how many people were in Azkaban that shouldn't be there, after all, if Sirius never got a trial, then how many others went without truth serum?

"So, next curse. Anyone?" There were less hands, but still more than normal classes.

"Longbottom."

"Cru–… the _Cruciatus_ curse sir."

Moody trained both eyes on to Neville, who seemed to have found something very interesting on the blank chalkboard behind the desk.

"Ah yes," Moody moved to retrieve another spider, but left his magical eye trained on Neville for a long pause. Once it was out of the jar he cast _engorgio_, and Ron gave up all pretences, pushing his chair as far away from the front of the class as it could go without running into Susan Bones sitting behind him.

"_Crucio_."

The spider began twitching, and convulsing. Moody had both eyes watching it, as did most of the class until Hermione yelled out.

"Sir, stop it!" Harry glanced around at her, but found she was watching Neville, who had gone deathly pale."

Moody glanced at the class and pulled his wand away. Harry couldn't help but notice that the spider continued to twitch, even after it was shrunk back down and the class moved on.

"Pain. Unbelievable, and uncontrollable. No need for torture devices if you can perform that one. It was rather popular too."

"Right then, the third Unforgivable?"

This time only Hermione raised her hand. Moody nodded at her "Miss?"

"Granger. The third one is… the Avada Kedavra. The killing curse." She whispered.

"Ah yes." The third spider scuttled about in the jar, avoiding Moody's wand, as if it knew what was coming, but it was no use. "_Avada Kedavra_." A flash of green light. Everyone winced, but Harry stared off into the distance, thanks to the dementors he couldn't help but associate that with a cruel high laugh and a feminine scream.

"Completely un-blockable. Like the other two, howevera little more…perminant. Avada Kedavra leaves no trace, except for the fact that the victim is no longer alive. There was a lot of muggle killing during the last war, and if you look up muggle history you'll find that there was a period where the muggles had a high-risk of something called heart-attacks. Even wizards can't identify the curse if the magic trace has enough time to fade from the crime scene. And there is only one person who has ever survived it, and he's sitting here in this room."

Harry felt all the eyes in the room focusing on him, he was almost expecting Moody to ask how he did it, but after a dramatic pause, where he stared blankly at the back of Justin's head in front of him, Moody continued on.

"Right then, homework for this week is a two-part, four foot essay on the history of the curses, and on effects and defenses of the curse. There is a little bit in your text book, but you will need to look up a few books in the library too. I don't know what your other classes are like, but I expect at least three references per essay, and I expect the correct length within an inch. Not to little, not too much. Just be clear you know your stuff as next Monday we'll be testing out Imperio."

Hermione had been studiously noting this in her planner, but at the last comment she looked up. "What? But that's illegal!" there were several others who made agreement noises, and mostly everyone looked uneasy.

"It is, however I've been given the authority for inside this class room, during lesson times. So you will all know what you're up against. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" he yelled, making more than a few jump.

"If you don't want to participate, you don't have to, however I would recommend it. Used to be standard Auror testing to be put under so you could learn to fight it. If you are uncomfortable, just let me know and I'll assign you an extra essay for our practical lessons."

The class finished soon after that and Harry found himself walking with Hermione, Ron, Dean and Jistin from Hufflepuff. All the boys seemed fascinated by the lesson, but Harry felt like their voices were coming from an entirely different world.

"Did you see it twitch? And the way it just stopped, mid step–"

"Just a FLASH!"

"Hurry up." Hermione interrupted, dragging Harry and Ron to the side.

"I'm not coming to the library again." Ron grumbled.

"No," Hermione pointed to an alcove. "Neville."

He was sitting on the window sill watching the light rain fall, apparently also in his own world.

"Neville, are you okay?" Hermione asked gently. The wide-eye, pale look hadn't worn off him since class.

"He– hello. That was a different lesson. Hmm, I wonder what's for dinner? I'm starving, how about you?" Neville said in a squeaky voice. Ron opened his mouth, but Hermione jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow.

"What happened with–" An odd clunking noise interrupted Hermione's questions, and Professor Moody grabbed Neville lightly on the shoulder.

"Come up to my office Longbottom, we can have a cup of tea." Neville looked even more frightened at this, but moved off the sill, heading back.

"Alright Potter?" Moody asked, snapping Harry out of a trance.

"Yes sir." He answered automatically.

"Hmm." Was all Moody said, before turning to follow Neville.

"What was that about?" Hermione wondered outloud.

"Who knows. At least it was spiders." Ron had a slight grin. Harry tried to nod, but found the idea of torturing even a spider completely foul, so he settled for a slight twitch.

"Yes, I don't really think we are meant to see a demonstration, although it was a good creature to choose for examining the effects on a central nervous system, far more joints." Hermione went into lecture mode, "The imperio too. I didn't know that it could make you do things you normally physically couldn't. It could be used for torture too in that respect."

"I think it will be interesting to have it cast on us. Good practice." Ron said, thinking of the mention of Auror training. Hermione nodded.

"The way that last one just stopped though." She shuddered. "I wonder if–"

Suddenly Harry couldn't take it.

"I'm off to the Library." He stated loudly, needing to get away from the conversation. As he rushed out of sight Ron and Hermione glanced at each other.

"Crap." Said Ron after a moment.

"Yeah, I didn't really think about that. I wonder how Susan Bones is coping as well."

"Shall we grab him some food?" Ron said staring unsurely after his friend. Hermione bit her lip, but shook her head. "I think he'll be okay, we were just being…"

"Insensitive." Ron shrugged guiltily. "At least Malfoy wasn't in that class with us."

"To true." Hermione winced, for once not even denying Malfoy's tactics.


	7. Chapter 7

Harry did join them after a while for dinner, 'I just needed a moment' was all he said, and the others dropped it. Trying to change the topic Ron suggested they attempt their Divination homework, however after predicting his death three times in a week, Harry finally gave in and headed off to see Professor McGonagall. He needed to know about Runes. He had seen her leave the Great hall, and was pleased to find her sitting marking in her office.

"Hello Mr. Potter, what can I do for you?"

Harry took a deep breath. "Um, I was just wondering about changing electives." McGonagall's eyebrows went up.

"You have missed a year of classes, why the change now?"

Harry struggled for words, but was cheered by the fact that it wasn't an outright no. "it's just that divination doesn't…" He didn't want to finish the sentence, not wanting to insult another professor. Fortunately for him McGonagall shared Hermione's views on the uses of Divination, and the corner of her lips twitched into an almost smile.

"have the most practical uses in your future?" She finished for him. Harry let out his breath.

"Exactly. I was wondering about the possibility of taking up Runes."

She pulled out a small tray of ginger snaps, offering him one.

"Are you wanting to work with Runes? I thought you wanted to be an Auror?"

Harry had wanted to be an Auror, and it was still at the top of his list of employment options, but then he only really knew of a dozen or so jobs in the wizarding world. The more he read up on law, the more he found mentions of departments and areas he had to look up.

"Well, yes, so far, however I don't really know what's actually available. I wish there had been a class at the end of second year for career choices, especially for muggleborns."

"But you're a half-blood."

"Yes, but I am muggle raised." Harry pointed out, "I do feel, that regardless of my career choice, Runes would be a better option than divination."

McGonagall nodded slightly then sighed, "It's most unusual, and if you dropped Divination, then couldn't keep up with Runes it would leave you in a complicated position." She frowned. Harry smiled sheepishly at her.

"I did have an idea of sorts…" She smiled at him so he continued, "well only one class lashes between Runes and divination, so maybe if I could go to both classes for the moment and just see–"

"And keeping up with homework?" She raised an eyebrow.

"Well, I don't mean to disrespect a class at all but Divination homework is…" Harry took a deep breath and went out on a limb, after all, even if he got in trouble for it, the worst that could happen was an improvement to Divination, "a complete waste of time. As long as I predict either my death, or in the very least my extreme discomfort, then I get high marks. I don't really think the majority of the class should be allowed, as it relies on the student having 'the sight', and isn't actually something that could be learned."

Strictly speaking McGonagall should reprimand Harry for those comments, but she found herself so much in agreement that she settled for a simple, light frown.

"So you would continue going to both classes, but essentially only be enrolled in Runes."

"Yes professor."

McGonagall sat and thought for a moment, before nodding. "I think everyone will be able to settle for that." Harry didn't mention that he thought Trelawney wouldn't be impressed, as it would hardly help his cause.

"We shall settle this now, as you have already missed a few lessons for this year, and I believe there is a double first thing tomorrow morning." She moved over to the fireplace and called Babbling. Harry was most nervous about this, as he hadn't expected it to be discussed, either immediately, or with him present, and other than at meal-times, he had never even seen Professor Babbling. Before she said anything he was repeating the mantra 'please not another Snape, please not another Snape' over and over in his head. Fortunately his fear was short lived. Professor Babbling was a cheerful character who loved her subject greatly. She was enthusiastic in the extreme for a new and willing student and threw Harry of completely only a few sentances in.

"Of course he'll probably be a natural at it, after all my predecessor was his mother." She smiled.

"What?!" Harry startled. Both women turned from their conversation to stare at him.

"You didn't know?" Babbling asked kindly. Harry blushed deeply. He had been brought up to never ask questions, and while he had shaken this for school matters after only one year of primary school, he still found it awkward for personal matters.

"I don't know much about my parents." He shrugged, "they were both in Gryffindor, my mum was quite good at Charms, my dad was in the Marauders, played on the Qudditch team and was an Auror. Oh, and they were killed by Voldemort… and I think that might be my fault somehow…" Harry added that last bit as an after thought, since he didn't know where to start investigating for Sirius he had begun at the beginning, that is, with his parents deaths. He was having trouble getting much information on the fidelius charm, however he did know that a powerful witch or wizard had to cast it, and that for this reason very few people went under it, and usually only when in extreme danger. It was somewhat like being given a safe-house in the muggle world. What he did know was that his father had continued working up until his death, having made his last arrest only three days previously, suggesting that it was either himself or his mother that needed protecting. Only if it was himself, he couldn't for the life of hi figure out why.

He was interrupted from this trail of thoughts as both professors began spluttering at once.

"Didn't your family tell you?"

"Surely Remus mentioned…" they both said at once, Harry just blushed again, and not wanting to talk about his family answered Professor Babbling.

"I only learnt about the marauders at the very end of last year, and during the summer I don't have great access to owls. Babbling sighed sadly, but McGonagall couldn't help but remember Hedwig, as she was quite distinctive. _Just what is his home-life like_, she wondered for the first time. She had never really looked past the fact that he seemed to be happy, but looking from a new angle there were some worrying hints there. _Albus_. She and the Headmaster would be having a conversation soon, and this time she wouldn't be shaken off by a simple 'he's safe.'

"Well, now is perhaps not the time, but if you want I could pull up her old file, and then I'd love to have a chat. While I wasn't teaching Runes at the same time, for obvious reasons, I was teaching muggle studies, and I was only two years ahead of her during school too. Remus was quite good friends with Lily outside of the marauders, as Sirius and James were always thick as thieves and was the only of the four of them to actually study." She smiled at him, then gave a wink. "However we are running off topic. I think you're plan sounds excellent, and even if you aren't a natural like your mother, we are mostly doing the same work as last year, only the students are expected to know the alphabets by heart. It should be quite easy to integrate you in if you just keep the dictionaries for now. It'll be a little bit slower, and you will be expected to catch up by the end of the year, I'll let you sit the same half-yearly exam but with dictionaries and charts, then the final one without."

"That sounds amazing!" Harry grinned. He really liked herm aside from the bonus of doing something connected to his mum, and it sounded as if it shouldn't be impossible to at least catch up to a passing grade by the end of the year. Plus if he changed the cover on Runes books he would even be able to study during the summer hiding his school books from the Dursleys as a muggle text.

"How long do I need to keep going to divinations?" he asked, glancing at McGonagall and hoping she wasn't going to try and lure Trelawney down to this meeting as well. McGonagall had been watching the two interact, and thinking fast. She knew Divination was Harry's worst grade, including History and potions, and after talking about it could see he had no real interest in the subject. Having a link to his mother would be good for him, and probably reflect in his studies.

"Well…" She hesitated, personally she didn't think he'd need a trial period at all, however that was after all her _personal_ feelings about divination getting in the way. "How about we leave that up to professor Babbling, if you don't mind Bathsheda, you and me can do a review after say, three assignments? Then we'll let you know."

Harry grinned. "That sounds great." Actually it sounded brilliant. Hermione had promised to help, and Neville had offered too, so as long as he worked extra hard specifically on the homework he felt he could be out of the perfumed death trap much sooner than he predicted. Now he just had to tell Trelawney… and Ron. He frowned slightly.

"Erm, what am I going to tell Trelawney?" He asked nervously. McGonagall smirked for a second, which caught Harry by surprise, however Professor Babbling just laughed.

"Well, while I'm sure I could think of a few truthful statements it might be better to go along the lines of sadly discovering you lack the sight, and not wanting to waste her great… talents, wanting the students with more talent to be allowed greater access to a resource such as herself." Professor Babbling snorted loudly, and Harry couldn't help but grin.

"Hmm… that might work." He looked at McGonagall slyly. "you know Professor, that was very… Slytherin of you."

McGonagall sighed dramatically, "Yes, well."

Harry stayed organizing for a few beginner lessons outside of class time, and to borrow school textbooks until he could owl-order his own copies. He admitted to having read through the first half of the third year text, to see if he was interested or not, which pleased Professor Babbling immensely, and she suggested that he try and finish that in his spare time, but that while it would help in understanding the basics, it was just the same lessons based on an easier alphabet, and reiterating that long as he was caught up on the theory by the end of year exams he should be fine.

Harry left the office grinning, especially when he ran into Snape, who tried to give him a detention for being out after curfew, and professor Babbling came up behind them and excused him, then walked him back to the tower chatting about Lily's final runes project in her seventh year, (Harry didn't understand much, but was pleasantly surprised how much he did, and was glad of a conversation about his parents regardless).

Unfortunately his mood couldn't last much longer.

Ron, Neville and Hermione were still up, and sitting in the common room when Harry got back to the tower. Neville was looking much better, Moody had been praising him on his Herbology work, Nevile told Harry with pride. Harry couldn't help but feel talking about how much professor Sprout talked about Neville's Herbology genius had been a very good way to cheer the boy up. It was the sort of thing Remus would have done and Harry couldn't help but like moody for it. Moody had also given Neville a book called _Magical Wate Plants of the Mediterranean_, something which sounded deathly boring to Harry but cheered Neville up to no end.

Hermione was up to drawing up club plans for S.P.E.W, something that Harry had been dreading for ages, but he still kept his peace, preferring to hold off on the argument for as long as humanly possible. Ron, however, had been playing himself at chess, and wanted harry to join him as soon as he got in, but Harry really needed to read up on Runes, Babbling had told him which chapter they'd be working on the next morning so Harry could get a feel for it and not be totally out of his depth. It made for an awkward conversation.

"Where have you been?" Hermione looked up as Harry sat down.

"Yeah, I had to play against myself. Fancy a game?"

"Erm, actually I have a confession…" Harry said sheepishly.

"You have a girlfriend don't you!" Neville grinned.

"What? No." Harry looked confused.

"Damn, I could have sworn Parvarti was eyeing you off, and she's still out too."

"No, she went up to bed when you were in the shower." Hermione nodded, "Besides, Harry like Ch–"

"_Anyawy_!" Harry interrupted, "I'mswitchingintorunes." He rushed out. Hermione lit up.

"Really? Oh Harry, that's great!"

"What?" Said Ron blankly.

Harry ran his hand through his hair, flattening his fringe. "Yeah, um, look, divination really isn't working out. I mean, it's fun and all, making up homework, but I don't really like someone telling me I'm going to die all the time, and I'm definitely never going to use it when I get a job."

Ron just stared blankly at him. "You're ditching me."

"No, I'm ditching Divination. I'm sure you could talk to Professor Mcgonagall about adding it as well…" Harry was sure of no such thing, he hated to admit it, but Ron wasn't really as academic as him, and while he was very logical, if he was going to choose one of the three theory subjects he'd be better off with muggle studies or Arithmancy first.

"Adding it in. So how come you get to just drop it?" Ron was slightly accusing.

"I don't. I'm doing both for the moment, but I'll be honest, I'm going to work really hard on getting in to runes, and slack off on divination to get there. I know which I want to do." Harry didn't want Ron to think he was getting special treatment, an argument he avoided at all costs. And while it definitely helped that his mum was so good at runes, that was just his mum, noting to do with the-boy-who-lived.

"Slacking off? What exactly have you been doing before this?" Hermione teased "You are going to have to put a lot of hard work in now." Harry just smiled.

"Yeah but this is something I actually might use."

Ron went very quiet after that, but Neville, sensing that there wasn't going to be a giant explosion in the group, at least yet, felt safe enough to help Harry look over tomorrows lesson. Harry did feel a little guilty abut this as working on Divination homework was something Ron and harry bonded over, however he was going to need all the help he could get, so just let it slide. Besides, Neville was proving to be rather enthusiastic about this too, and he'd obviously had a pretty rough day too. He could tell that Hermione was dying to ask Neville about his reaction in class, but while curious himself, was glad she didn't as Neville obviously didn't want to talk about it. Harry could understand that, Neville must have some sort of connection to the curse, Harry only hoped it wasn't because he'd been put under it.

Ron soon went up to bed, without saying much, leaving just Neville, Hermione, Harry and the twins in the far corner. They were hunched over another bit of paper, and Harry was beginning to doubt that it was order forms like he believed, especially when he started hearing parts of the conversation like 'No… that sounds like we're blaming him, we have to be careful' and yes but we can't send it with just any owl'. However George looked across at him and just shook his head, whatever it was Harry was probably better off not involved anyway. As soon as the twins left Hermione cleared her throat and rattled the box she'd been working on. Harry's heart sank.

"Right. I've finished." She grinned, Harry smiled weakly and heard Neville gulp beside him. She opened her box to reveal about fifty badges, all of different colours with the dreaded letters S.P.E.W. on them. Harry sighed and quickly tried to come up with a plan.

After a long speech Hermione started to delegate Harry and Neville to the group. While he didn't manage to avoid the group completely, he did manage to get himself into the roll of Vice-President. He thought he had done quite well, as he had heard his Aunt rave about how the person in this role never had to do anything unless the president was unavailable, and knew she had this role in many of the social clubs, getting the prestige of being a member without doing any actual work. He felt a little bad about this, but was actually justified in his reasoning, as he really did have too much on his plate at the moment, and really wouldn't find the time to be secretary. The fight was probably easier than it could have been, as Hermione tried to recruit Neville as well and they got into a long debate about house-elf welfare, Harry thought this was probably more beneficial to Hermione than all of her reading combined as Neville actually owned, and had therefore talked to, a house-elf. After a long battle in which Neville insisted that Millie would be very, very upset if he even suggested freeing her, Harry managed to finish off, with Neville's help, by convincing Hermione that while S.P.E.W was a very worthy name, House-Elf Welfare, or H.E.W was more likely to bring in more members, which would help the charity in the long run. Having convinced her of this, and helped her learn to charm the badges to the new letters, he was now willing to actually pin it onto his bag, and didn't feel as if he'd abandoned her at all… even though he probably had.

He even managed to come up with 'wELFare' which Hermione planned to charm the badges to alternate flash to, before they were interrupted by Hedwig. It was finally the letter from Sirius.

_Harry - _

_I'm flying north immediately. This news about your scar is the latest in a series of strange rumours that have reached me here. If it hurts again, go straight to Dumbledore - they're saying he's got Mad-Eye out of retirement, which means he's reading the signs, even if no one else is. _

_I'll be in touch soon. My best to Ron and Hermione. Keep your eyes open, Harry. _

_Sirius_

Unfortunately this ruined any possible good mood. First he had to explain the whole my-godfather-isn't-actually-a-mass-murderer-or-traitor thing to Neville, which just frustrated him as he was still stuck on the law front, and second, because now Sirius was putting himself in danger to be near Harry. On top of that Sirius hadn't actually given him any useful advice. His scar had only hurt once since summer and now he had to come up with a plan to keep Sirius out of trouble for long enough to figure out how to clear him. After discussing it ad-nauseum they eventually gave up and headed to bed. This didn't help much, as he lay awake running his mind over the fact that if Sirius came back, and got caught, it would be _his_ fault. He should have just kept his mouth shut. While worrying about Sirius Harry never noticed the unusual silence in the dorm. Neville's snores were missing, as he too was awake and running over and over the day.


	8. Chapter 8

The morning didn't bring much help. During the night he'd come up with a plan to just tell Sirius he's imagined it all. Neville intercepted this and pointed out that if it was his Godson he'd come anyway, and they would be better off coming up with a plan or place to keep Sirius safe once he did arrive, as arrive he undoubtedly would. Harry sighed heavily but admitted the truth of the matter and headed off to breakfast a little depressed.

After a few days of feeling nauseas and worried, Neville suggested that he wrote back telling Sirius exactly that, trying to play up on his worry as an extra distraction. Harry didn't feel like he was playing it up at all, but wrote the note nonetheless. He still felt that it was likely that Sirius would come anyway, and spent the next few weeks watching the post especially closely and actually reading the daily prophet. This turned out to be rather amusing, and he began following articles by the author Rita Skeeter. At first he couldn't believe what he was reading in her articles, but then he decided that he actually _couldn't believe it_, she had to be making stuff up, or at least exaggerating it extremely. After coming to this conclusion, and then realizing that the wizarding world was eating up every single one of her words as if it were gospel, he began reading them for their amusement value. He and Neville started a game, in which they made up what they thought the 'true story' might actually be based on the exaggerations in her work. It was quite fun. Ron and Hermione joined in occasionally, but Hermione tended to get annoyed at the public for being so gullible, and Ron kept getting tetchy about Neville's involvement.

This was an ongoing theme. Harry found himself spending more and more time with Neville. It had started with changing into Runes. Much to Harry's delight he did indeed take after his mother, and while he was a bit slow at remembering the meanings of each rune, he found he instinctively understood about how the connections and threads worked, and had even managed to make a connection of his own for the second assignment, and had gotten full marks.

Professor Babbling had initially partnered Harry with Hermione, as she was top of the class, however soon discovered an improvement in both boys when she paired him, the second lesson, with Neville. Neville liked runes, but struggled a bit, as he had perfect memory of the meanings of each rune, but difficulty in understanding how they work together. This matched Harry's instincts, yet lack of dictionary knowledge, and they both found that they were improving in the other half of the work through teaching each other.

For the last three weeks Harry and Neville had been meeting up in all of Harry's spare periods to work on runes, and found that they were actually quite similar, except that Harry had been forced into the limelight, and so never had the opportunity to be very shy. Harry also discovered that Neville had a wicked sense of humor, he just never felt comfortable enough to voice his jokes. Almost three weeks into Runes and Harry found he was more than ready to give up Divination, and had pretty much stopped doing the homework, or only rushing through it during the meal before class, and with all his free study periods taken up his time with Ron had been seriously eaten into. He was spending more time with Hermione too, studying their separate projects together in the Library. Harry was determined not to give up on either his Animagus, or Law plans, the first of which was coming along nicely, what with help from the twins, but becoming increasingly difficult to keep from his friends.

He felt a little guilty about not telling them, but he couldn't help the feeling of dread growing in him, and he didn't think it was all to do with Sirius. He was sure Voldemort was up to something, and in studying how Peter had escaped justice, and Sirius had escaped the effects of the dementors, becoming an Animagus was a skill he felt he might actually need, and one which would be more valuable the less people who knew about it. He was still a long way off, plus while the twins were doing a little research, he couldn't help but notice they were thoroughly distracted (even for them), and Harry was becoming more and more sure that they were either being blackmailed, or blackmailing someone. Though they weren't that close, so Harry decided to keep his nose out of it. He already had too many projects running at once without getting involved with someone else's.

He was really missing Quidditch too, and had started heading out to the pitch just to fly, but missed the physical side, and good sleeps he used to get after one of Wood's hectic training sessions.

He was pleased to note that despite having an extra subject, he was still going well in his other classes (although he would admit he wasn't really putting any effort in to Divination anymore and was going to approach McGonagall about giving it up in a week's time. He's only done one runes assignment, however he was loving it, and thought he could get away with a month for deciding).

It was with this calm slightly stressed feeling that he walked into DADA to discover that today would be the day they would be put under _imperius_.

Moody started the lesson reviewing the facts; when the curse had been invented, what it's original intent had been, and when it's change in status and penalty began to be enforced. Surprisingly all three of the Unforgivables were originally developed for healing. The Cruciatus was the most dodgy, but the magical world, while the muggles were working with electro-therapy, were practicing similar effects with the torture curse. Small amounts of shock to change a body's system. Avada Kedavra was developed during a war, as many people were left to suffer on the battle field in pain with no chance of survival. Apparently the place the curse was first used was dead for a radius of three miles still to this day, which Harry thought might have been a bit of a hint.

Imperius was first used by Arvello, when working on a patient with internal injuries, as he needed complete control of the patients movements during precise points of the surgery.

"Now then, You lot line up along the left hand side, leave a nice big space now. Thomas, I'll start with you."

Harry watched as each of his classmates lost total control. Dean hopped around humming the National Anthem, while others imitated various creatures, or did embarrassing physical acts. Neville performed a seriously amazing backflip, which Harry was quite certain he wasn't capable of when in his normal state. No one showed any signs that they were under the curse, except for the fact that Moody was making them do strange things. If he'd asked them to move around the room as normal no one would even know, however watching Susan Bones Rap out a beat, whilst in a handstand was a bit of a give away.

"Potter. You next."

Harry stepped forward with some trepidation. "_Imperio._"

It was like suddenly being dunked in a vat of heavy calming draught. Every worry and thought simply drifted out of his head, it was… it was… Brilliant. He hadn't felt this relaxed in months. Slowly everything around him kind of, melted out of existence, until he was left just with the presence of Moody.

A little voice spoke up: "Jump up on the desk."

Harry took a step forward and began to bend his knees. "That's it, jump." But suddenly a thought floated into his mind. _This calm isn't natural._ _Why am I jumping?_ The desk was the only clear thing in the room, but the fuzzy edges were melting outwards. "Come on jump…" _No, I don't want to._ "Jump, jump! NOW!" Moody's voice yelled. And Harry jumped… only he didn't.

THUMP!

Harry had expected with every thought to jump, but his body hadn't put any energy into lifting off, and as a result he pitched straight forwards, landing in a pile half on top of the desk, painfully knocking it over with a solid hit to his kneecaps.

"Now that's more like it." Moody grinned. The empty fuzzy feeling melted completely away and Harry became extra aware of his awkward position, and the pain in his knees.

"Look at that class… Potter fought! And damn, near beat it too. Let's try again. _Imperio_."

Harry barely had enough time to register when he was back, floating in an empty mind. It took him a moment to register the loss, but this time he was more aware of the fuzzy edges, and as he focused on them they began to spread slowly outwards until they didn't exist. Moody put him under again and again, trying him to do all sorts of things. The mundane had been the hardest (although least painful) to fight. Moody supplemented each attempt with a mere "Good work Potter." Or "watch the eye's that's where you'll see it." By the end of the lesson Harry was grumpy and bruised, but able to throw the curse off entirely.

"The way he talks, you'd think there was someone waiting around every corner to jump out and control us." He grumbled, limping a bit from where he twisted his ankle as only one leg refused to hop.

"I know what you mean," Ron said, getting laughs from another class, as he was still skipping on alternate steps. "completely paranoid." Ron, like most of the class, had had a lot of trouble throwing the curse, and only a few could fight it a little.

"At least you learnt how to throw it Harry." Hermione said, trying to hide a small smile at Ron's dainty skip, Harry just shook his head.

"Yes but I didn't really learn to recognize the signs of someone being under, as he seemed obsessed at making me the test dummy.

"I don't know where, or when we are meant to have time to read up on how to throw the curse." Ron grumbled, "At least it earned you a foot off your essay."

They all groaned. The fourth years weren't being allowed to slack off at all, as each of their Professors were reminding them of the Ordinary Wizarding Levels.

Professor McGonagall started every class with a prompt. "You are entering the first important stage of their magical education. O.W.L.S are only a year away."

"But that's a whole year!" Dean complained.

"Maybe so, Mr. Thomas, but you will need all that time for any preparation you can get! Miss Granger is the only one in either class who can successfully turn her hedgehog into an acceptable pincushion every time. I might remind you that your own cushion still curls up into a ball if anyone approaches it with a pin!"

Hermione blushed deeply, and tried not to look too pleased.

Ron was ecstatic, when Trelawney congratulated him on his excellent unflinching acceptance of the horrors in store for him, and gave him top marks. He badgered Harry the whole lesson, however was less pleased when she said she expected the same level of work for the following months prediction.

"I'm running out of ideas on my own." He complained on the way back to the great hall. Harry felt a little bad, but had no intention of doing next months homework, and did agree with Hermione a little, in accepting that it was cheating, and wouldn't help Ron in the future at all. He was finding it harder and harder to understand why he'd just been wasting his opportunities, and getting frustrated that Ron wasn't even willing to talk about plans for the future past 'becoming an Auror'. He promised himself to talk to McGonagall after the end of the next lesson.

All his teachers were in the same mind. Binns was asking for at least a foot of essay each lesson, and Flitwick had assigned them three whole books to read in preparation for the summoning charm they were about to start. Even Hadrig was putting on the pressure, as his blast-ended skrewets were deemed big enough to separate, and he was assigning each class member with looking after an individual or pair.

He had them testing different kinds of equally disgusting food options in each lesson.

"I will not." Said Malfoy flatly, after Hagrid suggested they come down outside of class to take notes and observe the creatures. "I see quite enough of the foul things in class." Hagrid looked crestfallen, however for once Harry agreed with the Slytherin prince, and stomped hard on Hermione's foot when she opened her mouth to volunteer.

"You'll do what you're told, or I'll be taking a leaf out of Professor Moody's booklet. Perhaps the skrewets like ferret."

The Gryffindors all roared with laughter, and the memory of painful embarrassment was enough to keep Malfoy quiet. If Harry chose not to point out that Hagrid didn't know enough magic to follow through with his threat, I'm sure no one but Malfoy would have blamed him.

Harry was struggling to keep up with his extra studies, and had mostly stopped work on Animagi, but refused to give up on his Sirius plight. He had discovered that there was a limited time that someone could be held before being charged, after which they were meant to be released. Also that, after ten years circumstantial evidence couldn't be brought to trial. Both of these discoveries were incredibly useful, however he still didn't know exactly _what_ counted as circumstantial, and couldn't get past the fact that there was a 'kiss-on-sight' command put out by Fudge, vastly reducing the chance of Sirius even making it to trial in the first place. Frustrated, Harry had started researching ways to keep Sirius safe, in a hope that one of them would get him to trial too. Having lived with the Dursley's in a small dark cupboard for the better part of ten years, Harry didn't want to exchange one prison for another, and didn't think Sirius would take kindly (or at all) to being locked up in a dwelling he couldn't leave, no matter how nice or safe he was.

They arrived in the entrance hall, laden down with a long list of essays to see a bold note pinned to the notice board.

THE DELEGATIONS WILL BE ARRIVING FROM BEAUXBATONS AND DURMSTRANG FOR THE TRIWIZARD TOURNAMENT THIS FRIDAY AT 6 O'CLOCK.

LESSONS WILL END HALF AN HOUR EARLY–

"Brilliant, it's potions on Friday. Less Snape!" Harry grinned.

STUDENTS SHOULD RETURN THEIR BELONGINGS TO THEIR DORMATORIES AND ASSEMBLE OUTSIDE THE ENTRANCE HALL IN **PRESENTABLE SCHOOL UNIFORM**TO GREET OUR GUESTS BEFORE THE WELCOMING FEAST.

"Less than a week to go!" Ernie McMillan cheered, his eyes lighting up, "I wonder if Cedric knows…"

"Cedric?" Ron asked.

"Diggory. He must be putting his name in." Harry shrugged.

"That idiot. No way, a Hufflepuff too!" Ron snorted.

Ernie turned to glare at him, "What you think it'll be a Gryffindor?" He demanded.

"He's not an idiot. You two just don't like him because he beat Harry at Quidditch." Hermione lectured, "Besides, he's a prefect." She finished, as if that sorted it.

"I don't think a person's house OR their prefect status will have anything to do with it." Harry interrupted.

"But Gryffindors are the brave ones!" Ron moaned.

"Yes, but Ravenclaw are more likely to know more spells, Slytherins would have more ambition to win, and you're not going to tell me that this whole thing doesn't reek of hard work." Harry pointed out, stopping Ernie and Ron from getting into a larger argument.

"Actually I think Cedric would definitely be in with a chance, but it all depends on who enters. I mean, I think Katie Bell would probably go really well, but she told me she wants to concentrate on getting good grades as she needs a scholarship in order to make a team after school."

Ernie turned up his nose snootily "So you still think a Gryffindor would be more likely to be picked too."

Harry shrugged. "I don't really know much about the tournament other than rumors about the common room, I mean… how is the Champion selected? Is it based on overall character, or just related to the challenges? And what are the challenges? I don't really know Cedric other than as a Quidditch player, but he's great at that."

Ron made a disgruntled noise, but Ernie left looking slightly less murderous.

Over the following week there only seemed to be two topics being discussed; the tournament, and the other schools. Harry noted that the castle seemed to be going through an extra-special clean too, and all the coats of armor gleamed, and the floors shined. He couldn't help but wonder how having other students in the school would effect the house elves, however whenever he did catch a glance at them they seemed especially cheerful, so he decided not to mention this thought to Hermione.

Filch was especially tense, and was so harsh on any students creating even the slightest mess, that he ended by terrorizing a bunch of first year girls into hysterics when they came in unchanged from Herbology. He wasn't the only member of staff who was tense. "Kindly refrain from revealing you can't even complete a basic switching spell in front of anyone from the other schools!" McGonagall had rounded on Neville, his cactus twitching away from the loud noises, as he had accidentally switched it's arms for his ears instead of the vines on the Tranactus plant they were aiming for.

Finally Friday arrived and the students arrived for breakfast to discover the great hall had been decorated over night for the feast. Enormous silk banners carried each house emblem, and a Hogwarts crest adorned the wall behind the teachers table. There were all sorts of flags in the colour of each house above and behind each table too, and even the candles were charmed to take on a slight hue in red, green, blue or yellow.

Harry followed Ron to sit with the twins, who were once again, sitting separate from anyone else.

"It's a bummer alright," George said glumly to his twin, "but if he won't talk to us in person we will have to resort to a letter. He can't avoid un indefinitely."

"Who's avoiding you?" Ron demanded.

"I wish you would." Fred replied.

"What's a bummer?"

"Having you for a brother." Fred again. George seemed really down.

"Any more ideas on entering the tournament?" Harry asked, trying to change the topic. His hunch about Bagman was looking more and more likely.

"Well we asked McGonagall…" Both boys winced.

"Hmm…" Harry grinned.

"Yeah, we didn't get much, just a lecture on behavior and how Hogwarts is to be represented in everyday life."

"I wonder what the tasks will be like?" Ron mused. "You know, I bet we could do them, we've done dangerous stuff before…"

"Which is exactly why I wouldn't want to!" Harry interrupted, "Think of all the horrible resources this school has to challenge a student."

"Still... I bet we'd survive anything they could throw at us." Ron insisted. Harry just shook his head.

"Who are the judges?" Ron said, glancing warily at Snape.

"Well the Heads of each school are usually on the panel, or at least they were in 1972, as all of them were injured when a cockatrice the champions were meant to be catching went on a rampage… killed more than thirty spectators too…" She mused, then realized everyone was staring at her shocked. "I keep telling you to read _Hogwarts: A History_" she rolled her eyes, "Although _A Revised History of Hogwarts_ or _A Highly Biased and Selective History, which glosses over the nastier aspects_ would be a more fitting title."

"What are you on about?" Ron asked before Harry could stop him, he had a fair idea what she meant.

"House elves!" Hermione's eyes flashed. "not once does it mentioned the oppression of over a hundred slaves within the whole book! Let alone the pressure of added work for Hogwarts guests."

Harry winced. _Ah, so she did notice the extra work_. Hermione went off on a rant, and Harry could only be glad that as vice-president all he'd had to do so far was pay his two sickles and display a badge. Ron had lucked out as treasurer, and was now expected to follow Hermione around with a tin, while she aimed for recruits. A few people had paid immediately just to avoid this, and some were genuinely interested in what she had to say, however other than Ron and Neville, she had only managed to bully two or three people into a more active role.

Fred and George were unimpressed with Hermione's ramblings, but made the mistake of involving her in debate. Although it was probably good for her to talk to someone who actually interacted with elves, and frankly, Harry was just glad to have her argue with someone else. He was distracted too as a small tired-looking owl had landed in Harry's soup. Sirius had sent another letter.

_Harry,_

_I'm sorry if you're worried, but I'll be fine. I've got somewhere safe, and I'll contact you when I'm settled into my colder climate. Don't use Hedwig, I'm sending her to Hermione with a blank note tomorrow, keep switching owls. I want you to keep me posted on events, and don't leave things out just because you are worried about me! I'm fine. Don't forget my advice from last time!_

_Love S._

"Why shouldn't you use Hedwig?" Ron asked.

"She's too recognizable." Harry sighed, incinerating the note into flames. He wasn't sure if he was more worried or relieved. He was Glad Sirius had arrived safely, but with that died any hope that he wouldn't come. He was very interested in inspecting wherever Sirius was staying. He had found various security charms, and had notes, which he would take when he visited. At least he wouldn't have to wait so long for a response.


	9. Chapter 9

There was a pleasant air of anticipation building as the day wore on. Harry was especially glad when the early bell went interrupting potions. Neville's calming draughts were working excellently, he had only blown up one cauldron since, and that was only because Goyle had switched a vial of regular water for rose water when Neville wasn't looking. The Gryffindors in general were having much more success, having discovered the more detailed formula's in the text book. Unfortunately this was increasing Snape's foul mood's tit for tat with improved skill, and as he couldn't catch Neville out so much he had taken to watching Harry like a stalk, and removing points for 'picking up his knife too slowly' and 'breathing too close to his cauldron'. Harry just bit his tongue and bared it. He was still losing fewer points than Neville had for destroying multiple spaces. Everyone was learning more too.

Harry and Neville had been watching the clock even more than usual, and were out the door and away before the last of the ringing had fades away.

Everyone was involved in a mad rush up to the dorms, then back down to the entrance hall and McGonagall was going around deducting points for untidy-ness. Harry tried to shrink out of her sight as Parvatti was asked to remove a pretty hair-clip, and Seamus' collar was charmed down, and his shirt tucked in by magic. Harry was aware of the state of the clothes under his robes, as there was only so much magic could do to Dudley's hand-me-downs, however he hadn't thought of it in first year, and he hadn't had an opportunity to shop alone since. Standing next to the impeccably neat twins (despite having to pull the matching clips from their hair), Harry vowed his next Hogsmead trip would involve a clothing store. It wasn't like he didn't have the money. McGonagall eyed his shirt with obvious disdain, but moved on without saying anything, much to Harry's relief.

"Weasley, Straighten your hat!"

"No, no, let the first years to the front."

"Sancton, in what universe does your name come next to Creevey."

It was a cold, clear night, and other than glancing at their watches every now and then, the crowd seemed to focus down the drive. Suddenly it occurred to Harry that it was unlikely for international students to arrive via train.

"How are they arriving?" He asked his obvious source.

"I'm not sure," Hermione disappointed, "Each school should have a different method of travel though. Harry suddenly had an image of Hogwarts students riding the giant squid along flailing tentacles across the countryside.

"Broomsticks maybe? Or if that's too far a port key? Maybe, if they are all over seventeen they'll apparate." Ron suggested. Hermione huffed.

"How many times am I going to have to remind you that you can't apparate inside Hogwarts!"

All Harry could think was that he should research how to put up that ward for wherever Sirius was, a thought that wasn't appropriate to voice here, so Hermione's complaint got no reply. They stood for a few moments longer, watching the silent grounds.

"Six O'Clock." Ron said, looking up expectantly from his watch. Right on time an excited sixth year pointed to the sky over the Forbidden Forest.

"Aha, if I'm not mistaken that would be Beauxbaton." Dumbledore spoke up from right behind Harry's section, making him jump. Sure enough, a dark spot in the sky steadily grew bigger until they could start making guesses to it's form.

"A Dragon!",

"A plane!" (Obviously a muggleborn),

"No silly, it's a flying house!"

As Usual, magic chose the least likely option as the most correct. A giant, three storied Caravan, pulled by eight flying horses landed surprisingly gracefully along the lawn. As it pulled closer and into the light the fine details of the carriage were only surpassed by the horses. They were Palomino's, but each easily as big as an Elephant, although built lean and muscled, reminding Harry of a cross with a ballerina.

Harry caught only a glimpse of two wands crossed in a coat of arms before the door was flung open and a small boy jumped down with golden steps. Following him was the biggest woman Harry had ever seen. Each of her shiny shoes were easily the size of a child's sled, and she easily made height half way up the second level of windows on their carriage. Once Harry Dragged his eyes away from the amazing woman he had to wonder how he could be staring at her in the first place. The students had stepped off behind her, all girls dressed in fine, blue silk. Every one of them gorgeous.

"Bloody hell." Groaned Ron. Harry agreed.

"Madam Maximim, how lovely to see you again. Welcome to Hogwarts." Dumbledore stepped forward and kissed her hand, barely having to bend to reach it.

"Dumbly-dore, I 'ope I find you well?" She asked in a deep foreign accent.

"Ah, as always."

"Has Karkaroff arrived?"

"Not yet. Perhaps your students would wish to wait inside in the warm?"

After a short discussion about the horses needing strong handling, and her doubts about their game keepers ability to handle any creatures so large, which amused the Hogwarts students to know end considering Hagrid, the Beauxbatons girls seemed to think this was an excellent idea, and formed neat lines following their headmistress inside.

"How big do you think Durmstrangs horses will be?" Seamus said leaning around Hermione.

"Well, I don't know if they'll use horses too, but if whatever they do use is any bigger then even Hagrid won't be able to manage." Harry grinned.

"What do you think that was about with the 'Our Game Keeper is busy with a few… er, other of his charges.' Quote Dumbledore?" Seamus asked.

"Skrewets." Hermione winced, all students within hearing of the conversation groaned.

"Maybe they got loose." A small third year joked.

Hermione shuddered. "Don't even say that. Can you imagine those things having free range of the grounds."

"Or worse." Lavender piped in.

"Worse?" Susan Bones replied.

"Worse." Lavender nodded, "When Hagrid would decide that it was the 'perfect class exercise' to round them up." A collective shudder ran down the line of fourth years.

Most people were still watching the skies, so they were caught by surprise when a burly Slytherin seventh year exclaimed, "The Lake!"

At first Harry thought there was something wrong, a giant whirlpool had appeared, a hole that was easily ten meters wide. After a moment of confusion Harry realized it looked so wrong because the water was spiraling outwards! Just as he registered this thought the hole spat out an entire ship, causing great waves to roll to the shore.

This time the students preceded their headmaster. In fact, he didn't even show up until the boat was well and truly docked, and the students lined up on deck. He then came into sight with three other boys, one of which was flanked by the other two.

"Krum." Ron hissed from somewhere down the line. Harry was shocked, It was indeed Viktor Krum. Logically Harry knew that he knew he was young, but the fact that he was still in school never really registered with Harry. _Maybe this is the real reason Quidditch was cancelled, wouldn't want the other two schools to get steamrolled_ Harry couldn't help but think. Just like after the match, Krum was far less graceful on the ground than in the air, and was even a little duck-footed. He did come across a little better for not being covered in blood from a broken nose.

"Ah, excellent Karkaroff. You had a good journey I trust?" Dumbledore enquired, leading the Drumstrang staff and students into the hall, leaving McGonagall to lead the Hogwarts students. Surprisingly the new students weren't in the great hall yet, however soon after everyone settled there was a great burst of power, and each of the house tables lengthened. Ron was desperately trying to catch the attention of Krum (which secretly Harry thought made him look ridiculous), however much to both of their dismays, he sat down at Slytherin only a few seats away from Malfoy, who immediately engaged him in conversation. Some of the other Drumstrang joined space at the Hufflepuff table, while most of Beauxbatons sat with Ravenclaw, with a small group at Gryffindor.

As everyone got comfortable and seated Ron ranted and raved about Krum, sounding out a list of possible ways to become his friend. Hermione unfortunately took it upon herself to point out all the flaws in his plans, ending the argument with an exclamation of "Yes, but _why_ would you want to go to all that trouble? He's just a Quidditch player." This left Ron speechless for long enough for Hermione to move on to a conversation with Neville, the only other person in their area not fazed by Krum's presence.

Indeed, the whole hall seemed to be straining to see the boy, and Harry suddenly felt a strong surge of sympathy towards him, after all for his entire first year, and the first month of every year after Harry found himself in a similar situation. Although he didn't really felt he'd actually done something for it (it was all his mum), and at least Krum had _chosen_ to become a Quidditch player.

"I can't believe I didn't bring a quill down with me." Lavender whispered, and much to Harry's surprise Katie Bell nodded enthusiastically.

"Do you think he'd sign my hat in lipstick?" she replied, glancing over a Krum and tossing her hair over her shoulder. Unfortunately Harry couldn't hold his laughter and ended up snorting pumpkin juice out his nose. The group of eight or so girls turned to glare at him.

"Just because _you_ won't sign things doesn't mean he won't." Angelina said snootily.

"Would you want my autograph?" Harry asked bemused. All of the girls suddenly blushed and looked away. _No way. Absolutely no way._

"But… _why_?" Harry couldn't help but ask out loud.

"You seriously don't know how famous you are, do you?" Angelina grinned. Harry just shrugged.

Ron snorted, causing Harry to glare at him. "Well it's not really something I like to think about."

"He actually doesn't _like_ being famous." Ron said, as if Harry was crazy.

"Yes well, I imagine you wouldn't either if everyone wanted you to sign something to celebrate that your parents were brutally murdered in front of you at age one." Harry stood up abruptly and moved down the table to sit with Lee Jordan and the twins leaving a spluttering Ron and a group of worried girls.

"I hadn't thought of that." Katie sighed looking after Harry.

"Well look on the bright side, Krum must be used to autographs, and he'll be here for months, so you won't have to waste your lipstick chasing Harry. Pass the potatoes." Ron said, shrugging his best friends behavior off.

Lee and the twins were a little shocked at this but shrugged it off and were happy to include him in some plans to prank the other schools while advertising their new 'products'. Harry soon found himself in a debate about how much Dumbledore would be willing to let them get away with.

"I reckon they'll be cracking down extra hard this year." Lee bemoaned.

Fred (Harry found he was actually able to tell them apart about 40% of the time now) sighed heavily. "We can't even play on Dumbledore's dislike for the Slytherins."

"Dumbledore doesn't dislike the Slytherins." It was an automatic answer for Harry, but looking at the three disbelieving faces he thought back on it. There generally were less severe punishments for other houses, and he always awarded large point scores to other houses when Slytherin looked like they were winning. Usually to Harry, but he had done it a few times to Hufflepuff, and once to Ravenclaw. "Oh." Was all he could manage.

"Usually as long as the results are amusing and not dangerous," George started.

"And you can organize to get caught by Dumbledore and not another professor,"

"Then he will pass it off with a few points and a long laugh." They bounced off each other nodding alternately making Harry a little dizzy. They began talking about some of their new product ideas and Harry tuned out for a while. _It is part of Hogwarts to have pranks_, he mused, _maybe…_

"You just have to pick on your own team." Harry interrupted George explaining how they were surprised when they had to use baby owl feathers instead of canaries in something called 'canary creams'

"What?"

"If you want to prank the other schools… Start out by pranking Hogwarts, and Hogwarts only."

"Hmm… well it would certainly stop the likelihood of expulsion, although I still wouldn't put it past McGonagall." Lee mused.

"Yes, she already gave us a lecture–" Fred started

"An hour long lecture!"

"On the expected behavior,"

"That she expects from her"

"Lovely little lions." They finished together.

Harry grinned, "Oh… but surely if it was something, I don't know… _useful_, even McGonagall couldn't complain?"

"Like what?" Fred said cautiously.

"Yea, I don't know how I feel about being… _useful_." George said the last word like it was a swear.

"I'm sorry. We should _START_ with something useful. Once they let their guards down and accept the pranks, we can build it up from there."

"We?" All three boys asked in unison. Harry blushed.

"Well… I may have a good idea and… don't laugh, but I've recently found out about a particular _inheritance_ which I've been failing to live up to." Harry gave the twins a significant look. "Besides, everyone will expect it to be you, so in the very least I could provide an alibi."

"Well…" The twins shared a look, then glanced at Lee for a quick but confused nod of acceptance, "So what's this idea then?"

"I couldn't help but notice that there are a lot of foreign students invading our territory. And that the poor dears are suddenly expected to speak English, while we, the estimable hosts, haven't made the least push to learn any of their languages."

"Ah, no brother dearest," Said Fred catching on, "it simply would not do if Hogwarts turned out to be a poor host."

"Yes, Gred, I do believe McGonagall would never let us live it down if we didn't put forward our best efforts to welcome our esteemed guests to the best of our abilities."


	10. Chapter 10

While they were discussing plans for tomorrows breakfast they had missed Filch setting up extra chairs and the Heads and Barty Crouch arriving. It also took a particularly loud throat clearing from Dumbledore, and a solid glare from most of the professors before they realized that he had stood to begin a speech.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, ghosts and – most particularly – guests," he beamed around at the foreign students, "I have a great pleasure in welcoming you all to Hogwarts. I hope and trust you find your stay here will be both comfortable and enjoyable." Then with a quick wave of his hands the feast appeared. Even from where they were Harry could hear Hermione complaining about 'claiming the work of house-elves as his own', and guiltily felt happy not to be sitting with his normal friends.

The feast was more extravagant in honor of the extra students, the house-elves had really outdone themselves. Harry had never seen most of the food in front of him, although he had cooked a fair share of the obscure desserts for Petunia before. The twins seemed almost equally out of depth, but Lee seemed more than happy to describe all of them, and Harry soon had a competition going to see who could try the most dishes. He found that Fred would eat absolutely anything, while George was surprisingly squeamish with anything red.

"Prank gone wrong with blood." He shrugged, forfeiting to Harry. In the end he and Fred came to a draw, although secretly Harry had gagged in his mouth on the last dish, some form of eggs, which he strongly suspected weren't from fish. They seemed to be sitting near a lot of French food, and quite a few of the girls from Beauxbaton came over to ask for dishes that had run out on their table. Their silky blue uniforms had most of the boys a little distracted, and didn't look to be doing much for keeping the girls warm. After watching the twins and Lee expertly flirt with every girl that came over Harry eventually won some points (plus a few glares from the boys) when he taught the fourth witch to come over shivering a warming charm they, as students in Scotland, had covered in first year.

He was actually enjoying himself greatly. While it was rather out of character for him to get outwardly annoyed at his celebrity status, he was always the center of attention, and hated it. Harry secretly thought that even Viktor Krum wouldn't manage to be center of attention for very long with the twins around, and Harry spent most of the meal trying not to cough up a mouthful of food, or snort more pumpkin juice through his nose. By the end of the feast he had a stitch in one side from laughing. This had become especially hard when a particularly pretty French witch approached Ron, Dean and Seamus, who only seemed to be able to splutter when she asked for the bouillabaisse, and eventually had to wait for Hermione to stretch down the table and pass it to her, Dean knocking a vat of gravy into Seamus' lap in a sudden effort to help.

"Veela." Lee said in awe.

"What?" Harry said, watching amused as Seamus refused to let Lavender clean off the gravy, obviously uncomfortable with a laughing witch pointing her wand lazily at his crotch.

"That girl, she must be part Veela."

"Ah, that explains it." Harry nodded to the ongoing escapades further up the table, unfortunately for Seamus bringing the twins rather loud attention to him.

"They don't make them like that at Hogwarts." Harry heard Ron arguing with Hermione.

"They make them okay at Hogwarts." Harry mumbled, glancing at Cho Chang, who was sitting at the Ravenclaw table not to far down from the silver haired witch.

"Oh-ho!" George grinned. Fred smirked and opened his mouth but Harry was having none of that.

"What you don't agree?" He said false-innocently, just loud enough to catch Angelina's and Alica's attention. Suddenly the twins were stuttering to find an answer and while they were busy Harry swiped the last piece of chocolate cake from off Fred's plate.

Once the plates were all cleared a tension filled the hall, and everyone quickly fell silent when Dumbledore stood. Fred and George leaned forwards and the group of girls all sat up straighter and grinned at Angela. _She's obviously planning to enter, well at least there is a chance for Gryffindor_ Harry thought as he to leaned to get a better view of the Headmaster.

"The time has come to begin the competition. I would like to give a brief informative speech before we bring forth the casket–"

"So _that's _the judge" Lee whispered as a box was carried in by Filch.

"Before I do that, let me introduce to you some faces that will become familiar over the next few months. Mr. Bartemius Crouch, Head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation, and Mr. Ludo Bagman," Harry couldn't help but notice that Ludo got a much louder applause, "Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports." Harry also noticed that Krum didn't applaud much for Bagman, in fact he almost looked to be glaring, although it was hard to tell as the seeker generally looked rather grumpy. Harry's thoughts drifted, idly wondering if his expression had much to do with constantly being hounded by fans. His attention was brought abruptly back as the Triwizard Cup was brought out from it's crate and the hall sucked in a collective breath.

The cup was beautiful, it was heavily engraved and had a pulsing blue glow, which originated at the newly lit silver flames. The flames themselves looked like molten silver flowing and dancing around the cup. The murmur of interest grew steadily and Denis Creevy actually stood on his chair to get a better look. Of course he was tiny, so he barely stood out.

"There are three tasks that the champions will have to face, all of which have been examined already by Mr. Crouch and Mr. Bagman, and will test the champions nerve, magical prowess, daring, and of course their ability to cope with danger. The tasks are spread out over the school year, the first one in just under a month away." The hall was filled with silence now, everyone eating up Dumbledore's every word.

"If you are of age, and wish to enter the tournament, you will have to place your name and school into the impartial judge: The Goblet of Fire." Fred and George exchanged grins at that. "Students will have twenty four hours to enter their names, until the Halloween feast tomorrow night."

Harry groaned loudly at this, but thankfully most of the school had begun whispering so very few people heard.

"I will ensure that nobody under seventeen will enter the tournament, and will be drawing an age line around the Goblet to this effect." The whispering in the hall grew louder and Harry could already see from the glint in the twins eyes that they thought they could beat this simple measure. "I wish to impress upon anyone who is thinking of entering the tournament not to do so lightly, as while we have reduced as many risks as possible, it is still a risk." Dumbledore stared around at them solemnly, before his face suddenly grew into a smile.

"Right then, now that we are fed and informed, we should head off to bed. Good night, and we shall see you in the morning."

They met back up with the fourth years to leave the hall, Ron watching the Drumstrang students carefully, wondering where they would be sleeping. Sadly, as Ron had been hoping to offer their dorm, they appeared to be heading back to their ship. Karkaroff was walking with Krum, offering wine and berating the other students for wanting some. As Ron kept slowing to try and get closer to Krum they arrived at the doorway at exactly the same instant. Harry gestured for Karkaroff to go firstand the Headmaster carelessly threw a polite "Thank you" over his shoulder, however after turning back he did a double-take and stopped to stare at Harry as if he couldn't believe his eyes. Behind him most of the Drumstrang students came to a stop and craned their necks trying to see the hold-up. Slowly they all caught on and Harry found many eyes flicking to his forehead, and not so subtle whispers running around the group. One boy actually pointed with his jaw hanging open. Harry sighed deeply.

Karkaroff's eyes took in all of Harry, slowly coming to rest on his scar.

"Yeah, that's Harry Potter." Said a growling voice from the side. Thankfully this took some, but not all the attention off Harry. Karkaroff spun around.

"You!" He said, to Mad-Eye.

"Me." Mad-Eye agreed, magical eye spinning. "And unless you've got anything to say to Potter I suggest you stop blocking the doorway.

Karkaroff seemed to glare, first at Mad-Eye, then at Harry, but said nothing and swept from the room, actually leaving Krum to trail a bit, something which seemed to shock his students a little.

Harry sighed, pushing through the crowd to catch up to the twins and get back to the Hogwarts students who were mostly used to him.

"An Age line!" Fred grinned, as they walked back to the Gryffindor tower. "We already have some aging potion on stock. Piece of cake."

"Yes but the competition is for seventeen year olds, you shouldn't–" Hermione lectured, but George just leaned around her to Ron.

"Mum would kill me for asking," He said gleefully, "But do you want some if we can get past?"

Ron nodded immediately, stepping out of reach of Hermione he grinned. "Hell yes!"

"What about you Harry?" Fred asked.

"Still a no, but thanks." Harry smiled, causing the twins to shake their heads in shame.

"No sense of adventure this one!" They joked, causing a few people to laugh thinking of Harry's previous years.

"But I don't think anyone under seventeen will stand a chance," Hermione fought on, "We just haven't learnt enough…"

"Speak for yourself." Said George shortly. "Hey Harry, continuing our conversation about certain inheritances you haven't yet lived up to, mind if we borrow…" He trailed off, and caused an already glaring Hermione to glare harder by winking at Harry. "Got to watch out for the competition."

"Wha– Oh yeah, sure. Are we still on for the other thing?" Harry said, causing Hermione to get so frustrated that she Huffed and stalked up the girls dormitory stairs.

"Sure. Grab your… stuff, and head up to our dorms. You can help us with the potion if you want?" This then caused Ron t give Harry a jealous look, but Harry just mouthed 'I'll explain it in a bit', so they headed up to their own dorm together.

"They want the map back to watch who's entering, and I want help with a prank." Harry shrugged, talking quickly before Dean and Seamus entered the dorm.

"A prank? What are you doing that for?" Ron asked warily.

"Because... I guess it's a link to my dad." Harry shrugged.

"Oh." Ron went quiet for a bit. "Hey listen, about tonight, I didn't–"

"Nah, it's fine." Harry grinned, "I'm just in a foul mood."

"Oh? What's bothering you?"

"Well… this is going to sound stupid, but have you ever noticed things always happen to me on Halloween?"

"What do you mean?"

"The troll, the first attack, Sirius breaking in… and, you know, mum and dad."

Ron frowned. "So you think something will happen tomorrow?"

Harry shrugged, "I just think it's pushing fate a little to have the names drawn on Halloween."

Ron's frown increased, "Well, you know, I was there for most of that too."

"Yeah," Harry's mood lightened. "Yeah, you were."

Harry delivered the map up to the twins, they were already brewing a cauldron each, Fred a giant silver one, which he was sprinkling shredded pieces of paper into, and George a small one that seemed to be cycling from White to Black and back again.

"What are you adding?" Harry curiously asked Fred, only ever having added plant or animal parts to potions before.

"This is a language potion. The book we found it in said you have to read the entire language dictionary out while you stir it, but after a little experimentation we found that if you just shredded the dictionary into the potion then it does the same process."

"Plus you can use it for more then one language this way, as normally there isn't enough brewing time to read out more than one language."

Harry stared into the murky potion, he could see little bits of paper floating around still.

"Are you sure this is safe?"

"Of course. We did comprehensive testing." Fred grinned. "After all, while your _wand_ is registered over the holidays, any potions you brew aren't."

George nodded with a matching smile. "Of course there was the odd explosion –"

"Or two." Fred interrupted.

"Or two," George acknowledged, "But after we discovered adding bubotuber pus dissolves the paper, the whole thing became significantly easier to get down."

Harry sighed, but dutifully ladled the potion into five big containers.

"So how do we get people to drink it?"

Fred and George grinned. "Ever been to the kitchens?" They said in unison.

Two hours later Harry and the twins returned to the dormitory heavily laden down with snacks. The elves were very happy for some extra work it seemed, and surprised Harry by agreeing immediately to helping Fred and George.

"Don't you worry they'll turn you in?" Harry asked as they stepped into the common room, still watching the map.

"That git Peterson from Slytherin has just entered," George commented, he had been watching the goblet since they finished brewing, "Nah, the little blighters love us. I know Hermione thinks she's standing up for them, but they are actually happier when they have more work to do."

Harry just made a non-committal noise, he knew better than to get caught between the twins and Hermione. "I actually didn't think Peterson was that bad." He switched back to the topic of the Triwizard entrances.

The twins shrugged in unison, not looking at each other, "Yeah, he stays out of stuff, but can you imagine–"

"A _Slytherin_ champion. We'd never live it down."

Harry had a sudden vision of Malfoy gloating, but shrugged it off with a shiver, "Yeah I guess, Do the other schools have houses? I wonder how they chose who came here?"

"Maybe just all the seventeen and older students." They shrugged again in unison.

"Hmm, yeah I guess I didn't see many younger students. Pity, all those extra French witches…" Harry grinned, and dodged Lee-Jordan's friendly swipe and headed back down to his own dorm.

The next morning Harry set his alarm early, and got up straight away to wake Ron.

"Come on! Wake up!"

"Whassmatter?" Ron rolled over, wrapping the blanket around him and falling to the floor with a loud THUMP.

"I'm heading down to see who's going to put their names in the cup, the twins reckon that most people will try and do it before everyone wakes up."

"Before we even wake up." Dean said, climbing out of bed and making his way blearily over to the bathroom. There was a lot of grumbling but soon they were all up and dressed and heading down to sit near the cup. Apparently they were right with their hunch. Other than the fourth year Gryffindor boys, there were a few Ravenclaws, studying on the benches, but looking up to watch people enter and a group of Sixth and seventh year Hufflepuffs, who cheered loudly when four boys and a girl from their house entered their names, but then headed in to breakfast.

Cedric Diggory was one person who entered, and came over to talk with Harry, who had struck up a conversation with Davies, the Ravenclaw Quidditch captain.

"So you've entered then?" Davies grinned.

"Yeah, did you?" Cedric smiled widely, nodding acknowledgement to Harry.

"Nah, I decided against it. I want to do well on my N.E.W.T.S this year. It's a bummer about Quidditch though."

Harry grinned at this and looked at Cedric, "It's a pity we can't have an inter-school game, although I'd lose my record a second time, and without the dementors." Harry winked.

Cedric laughed loudly, "Who's to say I wouldn't have beaten you to the snitch anyway?"

"Ah, but we'll never know." Harry joked, but then switched to a normal tone, "In all honesty you were pretty far ahead of me."

Davies grinned, he had never talked to Harry off the field before, and until a passing comment that morning had assumed he was a bit of a snob. Fred and George were wearing off on Harry though, and after a few jokes the ice broke, and with no competition this year they got into an enthusiastically debate about Quidditch tactics. Ron added the occasional comment in, but his house pride was still too strong to talk much Quidditch with an opposing team member.

"It is really unfortunate for me that they aren't running a season, It means I won't have Quidditch Captain on my graduation certificate, nor the championship cup we would obviously have won." He winked and Harry and Cedric just laughed.

"That was one of the main reasons I entered," Cedric admitted sheepishly, gesturing to the cup. "I figured if I couldn't play Quidditch I had to do something with my time."

Harry frowned. Quidditch was a massive stress reliever for him, and he was missing it already, even though he was still forcing himself out to fly.

"I'm already missing it, although I've been out flying quite a few times. I'm thinking about buying a snitch too, because Madam Hooch won't lend me a school one and I don't want to get out of practice."

"I've got one." Cedric grinned, "And if you'll let me join you I'll even let you use it."

"Really!" Harry grinned, "Having someone to fly with would be great."

"What am I? A broom?" Ron spoke up jokingly.

"No, but as much as you enjoy being Keeper, I _suck_ at Chaser." Harry said despondently making the two elder boys laugh.

"Maybe we could get some pick-up games going?" Cedric suggested.

"Assuming you don't get into the tournament." Harry grinned.

Cedric shook his head, "I'd like to, but I think it's unlikely. There is already bets going around about who will be selected, Merlin only knows how they got the names. So far Jenkins is leading."

"Who's Jenkins?" Davies asked wrinkling his nose. Harry just laughed.

"He's in your year. But Gryffindor, he seems the quiet type though, I wouldn't have even suspected him of entering."

"Oh, is he that dark-haired boy? He's amazing in defense, and in charms. Besides, our house had a debate a few weeks back; they think it'll be a Gryffindor too. After all, you guys are all about bravery and daring."

Harry shook his head again. "Yes but we are all sorted because of our _strongest_ traits. Just because you are in Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff doesn't mean you aren't brave, just that you are more interested in knowledge or loyalty."

"I heard you said that before when your mates were discussing my considering entering." Next to Harry Ron went a bright red and suddenly found interest in the conversation Neville and Dean were having.

"Hmm." Harry mumbled.

"So can I join you in the mornings with the snitch?"

Harry grinned. "Please."

At that moment they were interrupted as Fred and George turned up to much cheering. They walked up to the edge of the line and clinked glasses before downing a bit of their aging potion and trying to cross the line. They both got two steps in and began cheering themselves, when suddenly there was a loud sucking noise and they were thrown across the hallway, landing in a pile of tangled limbs. Just as they got themselves untangles there was a loud POP and both of them sprouted waist-length beards. The whole room went silent as the twins stared at each other.

"I say _old_ chap, you look rather dashing in that." George grinned.

"Equally as old and equally as dashing as you my dear." Fred said, reaching out and tweaking George's beard. Suddenly they were both rolling on the floor laughing, and the room quickly joined in, only to stop again when Dumbledore materialized out of nowhere and suggested that they head up to the hospital wing where Madam Pomphrey would fix them up straight away. They looked at each other, then glanced quickly at Harry.

"Actually I think we'll enjoy this for a few hours first." They grinned in unison.

"Ah, very well," Dumbledore smiled benignly "After all, one can gain great wisdom through experiencing the knowledge of time whilst still young."

The twins just started a parade towards the great hall. Harry, Cedric and Rodger Davies followed on together, the other Hufflepuffs having already gone.

"Bloody barmy." Cedric muttered.

"What, the twins?" Harry asked.

"Nah, Dumbledore."

"Oh definitely." Harry agreed. Both boys turned to stare at Harry, who was generally acknowledged by the whole school as being quite close to the Headmaster. "Of course he does it on purpose most of the time." He grinned. "Oh, and I'd watch out for the bacon and the pumpkin juice." He winked and went to sit next to Ron.

Cedric and Rodger Davies glanced at each other as they headed towards their respective tables.

"Hmm, he's been hanging around those twins a lot lately." Rodger mused.

"Yes," Cedric agreed, "I think I'll be having tea instead of juice this morning."

"Mmm, no bacon for me." Rodger agreed.

They both grinned.

In the end it wasn't such a drastic choice, the twins had wanted the prank to have a time-delay activating on a certain phrase or word, however Harry suggested just having a time-delay from when someone eats or drinks. That way they would have moved on to different foods and it would take longer to figure out what was causing the prank. The twins had just stared at him silently, making for a very nervous Harry, however on a silent signal they dropped to their knees and began hailing him as 'Oh great prankster son of prongs, teach us all you have naturally inherited. Harry had given Sirius a quick mirror call to let him know this, and had had him in strong hysterics.

As it was, the system was a huge success, and no matter how much McGonagall glared she couldn't pin it down to the twins (although they did lose twenty points for having crooked ties… and they didn't even have ties on). Everyone else laughed at first, then tried to find the source, and as the foreign students joined eating bacon and pumpkin juice became quite popular. The effects were for ten hours, and by the time Harry got to his second class most of the teachers had given in and approached the elves for extra potion. The potion meant that everyone was talking constantly in either Bulgarian or French, and had completely forgotten how to understand English. It was particularly funny for the few students who had skipped breakfast, as they had no idea what was going on all day. History of magic was especially boring too, as Professor Binns couldn't eat anything, so droned on in an, to the students, unrecognizable language. Fortunately no one but Hermione paid attention in history anyway.

The one downside to the potion was that Harry could now understand all the whispering students. Clearly rumour of his existence had been spread through the foreign schools, and it felt like first year again as people were standing on tip-toe, and doubling back to get a chance at a look at him. Hermione, Ron, Neville and Harry had had a break after first period, however after being pointed at just as much as the students coming to enter their name, Harry and Hermione headed off to the library. Harry had overheard someone discussing the tournament, and how the international ministries had had such a hard time agreeing on which school to have the competition as if anything went wrong the students would be under British Ministry rule, rather than French or Bulgarian. Harry had been stuck for a while on the law front, however this gave him a whole new lead. In the end Harry had worked all through the free period, and lunch too, and had to run to get to Herbology on time.

The fourth year Gryffindors arrived back in the entrance hall after class just in time to catch a Grinning Angelina.

"I did it!" She yelled, grabbing her Quidditch team mate Harry into a bear hug.

"You're seventeen then?" Harry asked.

"Of course she is. Do you see a beard?" George grinned. He had simply trimmed his down into a very square shape. For once the twins weren't identical, as Fred had braided his into dreadlocks.

"You're kidding! That's great." Ron cheered.

"Yeah, I hope it's you." Harry agreed.

"Now we can cheer for a Gryffindor." Dean nodded.

"Yeah, I just had my birthday last week." She was grinning from ear to ear.

They had Care of magical creatures next, and just as they were heading back out to class the Beauxbaton girls all lined up orderly and entered their names on pale pink perfumed paper.

"Hey look, it's your friend." Harry grinned, pointing the witch from last night to Ron. Ron just went bright red and pretended not to hear.

"What do you think will happen to the ones who don't get it? Will they stick around, or go home?" He said, blatantly ignoring Harry.

"Not sure. Though I guess they will have to wait for their Headmistress?" Harry shrugged.

Hermione suddenly caught up behind them rattling her box full of badges. "I'd forgotten. I haven't asked Hagrid about joining yet!"

They followed the Beauxbaton Girls down the lawn, splitting off to reach Hagrid's hut, the Beauxbaton coach parked not far away.

Hagrid started out the lesson on Skrewets again, however ended in a lecture of house-elves after Hermione tried to get him to join.

"They aren't happy unless they are working. They will actually spiral into depression, and eventually die without a master."

Hagrid surprisingly knew quite a lot about house-elves, and it ended up being one of the more interesting lessons they had had, despite a grumpy Hermione.

Harry's mood was helped by the announcement at the end of class that the Skrewets had grown big enough to start killing each other and there were only twenty left. Of course this was twenty more than Harry ever wanted to see in his life, however it was a vast improvement on the hundred or so they had started out with. Sadly Hagrid had separated them so there wouldn't be any more deaths.

"I'm almost thinking about studying the damn things diet in the hope that I'll figure out how to poison them" Ron Grumbled as they walked back to the castle. He had been unfortunate enough to be the demonstrator at the beginning of class and now had a light burn on his left leg. They had been waiting for Hagrid, but he kept muttering something about 'getting ready for the feast'.


	11. Chapter 11

The castle had undergone a transformation in the last hour as the Halloween decorations were all let loose. Carved pumpkins floated about the castle shooting orange confetti everywhere and charmed bats circles above everyone's heads. The feast was made up of amazing food again, however it seemed to drag on and on. All around the hall the students ate quickly, and kept glancing towards Dumbledore to see whether he had finished or not. Eventually the golden plates cleared back to their spotless state and everyone turned expectantly to the staff table. Dumbledore stood, while Karkaroff and Madam Maximim seemed especially tense, Bagman was practically dancing in his seat, however Mr. Crouch just looked uninterested, completely blank.

"Well, the goblet is almost ready to make its decision, I estimate that it requires one more minute." Dumbledore said, peering across the goblets flame out to the students. "Now, when the champions names are called, I would ask them to please come to the top of the hall, and enter through the door to the left of the staff table," Dumbledore indicated the chamber that first years usually come through to be sorted, "where they will be receiving their first instructions." He took his wand and gave a great sweeping wave over the hall, putting out all the candles and leaving the only source of light; the goblet. "Good Luck."

Right as Dumbledore finished the goblet flames seemed to dim down in vibrancy, then immediately after flared both in intensity and size, spitting one long, red flame upwards carrying a champions name. Dumbledore caught it and held it at arms length so it could be read by the light of the goblet.

"The champion for Durmstrang is Viktor Krum."

Cheers broke out across the hall, although mostly Hogwarts and Beauxbaton students, most of the other Durmstrang boys seemed put out that Krum would be getting more limelight.

Krum slipped from his seat at the Slytherin table, slouching the whole way up the hall, past the staff table and into the side chamber.

"Well done Viktor! Well done." Karkaroff's voice, and loud clapping could even be heard over the rest of the cheering.

Just as Krum disappeared through the door the goblet flared red again, a second piece of parchment, pink this time, appeared.

"The champion for Beauxbaton, is Fleur Delacour!" said Dumbledore.

Looking around Harry spotted 'Ron's friend', the pretty possible Veela get up gracefully and walk along the rest of the hall. The way she moved seemed to be almost a dance. However if the Durmstrang boys had been unhappy with Krum, it was nothing on the Beauxbaton girls. They all had scowls on their faces and none of them were cheering, there were even two girls sitting right up the front who had dissolved into tears.

Again, right as she disappeared through the door the goblet flared red for the last champion. The tension in the hall was much greater this time, and it seemed every Hogwarts student except the Weasley twins were holding their breath. Harry could hear Fred and George two seats down whispering "Angela, Angela" over and over.

Dumbledore reached out and held the paper, taking longer than before to read.

"And the Hogwarts champion…" he paused and glanced slowly from one side of the hall to the other, "is Cedric Diggory."

"Oh no!" Groaned Ron loudly, but he wasn't heard by many, as the Hufflepuffs had exploded into cheers, jumping up on the table and screaming. They didn't normally get any glory, and while Harry too would have preferred Angela, he couldn't help but think Cedric was at least a good sort.

"At least it wasn't Jenkins." He pointed out to the despondent Gryffindors.

"Yeah… Yeah your right." Angela agreed sadly, "And Cedric always plays fair on the pitch. But it would have been great…" She sighed.

Slowly the cheering died down and Cedric managed to extract himself from under the entire Hufflepuff house and make his way up the hall. Harry felt a massive weight lift from him, because despite all the rules and prevention measures, he had really thought that Halloween was too much of an omen to be ignored. He also felt that Dumbledore's face had shown first relief, before announcing Diggory's name, however he just put that down to imagination.

Unfortunately this relief was short lived. "Excellent, well we now have our three champions," Dumbledore said cheerfully looking around, "and I'm sure that I can rely on all of you to give each of your champions all the support you can muster. By cheering on your champion you will be giving very real–" Dumbledore stopped speaking, it was apparent to all what had distracted him.

Suddenly the goblet flared red once more, and a piece of parchment was spat out by a long flame. On instinct Dumbledore reached out and snatched it from the flame, before the goblet glowed red entirely, then went out. The silence in the room was almost so tangible you could see it. Dumbledore's hand remained out stretched, the paper crumpled in his fist. Eventually he seemed to shake himself off and there was along pause as he seemed to consider the name on the parchment.

Clearing his voice he read out, "Harry Potter."

Harry sat there, aware that once again, every head in the great hall had turned to stare at him. He felt numb. Surely this was all just a horrible dream. He had not heard correctly… But he had.

There was no applause. A buzzing, as though of angry bees, was starting to fill the hall; some students were standing up on their seats to get a better look as he sat frozen to his seat. Harry turned to Ron and Hermione; beyond them he could see the long table of Gryffindors staring open-mouthed. Angela wasn't meeting his eye.

"I didn't put my name in," he said blankly. "You know I didn't." Hermione stared just as blankly back. He focused on Ron and found that his best mate was giving him a very calculating look. _He doesn't believe me_ the little voice in his head broke through Harry's stupor.

"No." He said firmly.

At the staff table Dumbledore had straightened up and nodded to Professor McGonagall.

"Harry Potter!" He called again. "Harry! Up here, if you please."

"No." Harry said it much louder this time. "I didn't put my name in."

The angry bee noise increased exponentially, and people were glancing between Dumbledore and Harry as if following a tennis match.

"Harry, you have been selected–"

"How?" Harry demanded. He remained firmly seated. "No. I won't do it."

Suddenly Ron gave him a push into standing position. Harry turned and stared at him open mouthed. Anger boiled up inside him. Dumbledore called once more, and Harry moved, but he turned back to address Ron, and the hall with him.

"I didn't do this, and when I find out who did, man am I going to be pissed." A foul look crossed his face, and he actually saw a few first years flinch.

He walked up between the Hufflepuff and Gryffindor tables, it seemed like an hour before he reached the staff table, he passed Dumbledore who was not smiling, and Hagrid, who did not wave or grin, or show any of his usually greetings. _They think I did this too._ The anger boiled up even more within him. The buzzing in the hall had grown louder and louder until people were almost yelling. He walked through the door into the side chamber and it snapped shut behind him, cutting the noise down to tense silence.

The faces in the portraits all turned to look at him as he entered, a witch from a painting in the great hall rushed through to greet a huge man with a walrus moustache, whispering fiercely in his ear.

Viktor Krum, Fleur Delacour and Cedric Diggory were grouped around the fireplace, and turned to stare at him as he entered.

"Vat is the matter?" Krum inquired.

"Oui, do zey need us back in ze hall?" Fleur looked at the door behind him expectantly.

Cedric was staring at Harry, focusing on the look on his face. "…Harry? Harry, are you okay?"

Harry opened his mouth and tried to say something, but nothing came out. He stood there, for what felt like an age, gaping like a fish. "No." He eventually croaked out. "No, I'm not."

Before he could say anymore Ludo Bagman rushed through the door.

"Well!" He said, clapping his big hands together and rubbing them greedily. "Well then." He grinned across the room. "May I present you, as incredible as it may seem, with the fourth! Triwizard champion."

"No." Harry said firmly again, however this time it was drowned out by the protesting actual champions. Dumbledore, Karkaroff, Madam Maximim, Mr. Crouch, Professor Moody and Professor Snape entered at the same time too.

"Oh, very funny joke Mr. Bagman." Fleur said, as if she had just caught on. "Har, har."

"Joke?" Bagman enquired, "This is no joke. Harry has entered, and has been made the fourth champion."

"No." Harry repeated, but was being ignored again.

Viktor Krum's bushy eyebrows narrowed together, and Cedric was looking politely bewildered.

"But evidently zair 'as been a mistake," Fleur said contemptuously "E cannot complete. 'E is only a little boy. 'E is too young." Somewhere under his disbelief Harry bristled at that, but had to agree with her anyway.

"Harry did you enter your name?" Dumbledore asked in a very blank voice.

Harry opened his mouth to reply, but was cut off.

"But of course he did." Karkaroff complained. "He wants the fame and glory. What I want to know, is why Hogwarts, has allowed itself two chances." He folded his hands over his chest and glared at Harry.

"Harry–" Dumbledore tried again. This time Snape cut in.

"Albus, you cannot seriously be doubting that the fool boy isn't responsible. He–"

"NO!" Harry yelled. "Enough."

Snape sneered at him, but Harry ignored it, looking at Dumbledore pleadingly.

"You did not enter your name?"

"No."

"And you did not ask someone older to enter it for you?"

"Of course not! I don't want to compete!" Harry tried to restrain his voice from yelling, but was having a hard time.

"Well then, Harry my boy, I'm afraid–" Harry could tell where Dumbledore was going with this, but suddenly the last question permeated his brain.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Harry interrupted rudely, "You're telling me," He pointed at Dumbledore accusingly, "that all someone underage had to do to enter their name was to ask someone, anyone, older than them to put their name in?" He demanded. There was a long awkward pause,

"Well, erm…" This was the first time Harry had every heard the headmaster at a loss for words.

_Anyone could have put my name in_ Harry groaned internally. _Enough_ "Right. I want a re-draw."

"I'm afraid you can't Potter." Mr. Couch spoke up, "It's a magically binding contract. If you don't compete then you'll lose your magic."

There was a long silence, then everyone started talking at once. Harry turned and started banging his head against the wall. Eventually he turned to Cedric.

Cedric was still staring at Harry politely bemused, although there was a hint of annoyance showing through now. "Surely _you_ can't be happy with this? Maybe…" Harry turned back to Crouch, "Could Cedric protest my entrance?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, like an 'objection' in court. I mean, he's the Hogwarts champion, I'm being forced to steal his thunder, surely he could protest?" Harry was almost pleading, but was again met by silence.

"You really don't want to do this?" Cedric asked carefully.

"No." Harry stated.

"Hmph. Vhy Vouldn't you?" Viktor Krum demanded. "Glory and gold, everyone wants that."

Harry just snorted. "Okay, I know you're famous yourself, and I don't know what it's like outside of Brittan but, Hi, I'm _Harry Potter_." He paused with a derisive look, "I don't really need glory, and while I'm not loaded exactly, the extra thousand Galleons won't make a _huge_ difference." There was another long pause, where everyone contemplated this, and Karkaroff snorted. Finally it seemed to convince some of the others a little. Harry saw Madam Pomphrey and Professor Sprout, who had entered just in time to hear his protestations, exchange looks.

"Zen you want recognition as an adult." Fleur stated heavily.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Look, is there anyway I can convince you. That all that I really wanted was a normal year." Next to Harry Cedric made a small 'oh' noise.

This time the long silence was a slightly confused one by all but the Hogwarts residents, however even Snape seemed to acknowledge his point. Eventually Cedric cleared his throat, "I believe him." he nodded.

"Vhy?" Krum demanded.

"Because…" Cedric glanced at Harry. "Because if any of the rumors are true, Harry probably does just want a normal year." Cedric nodded his point again.

"Rumors?" Krum again.

Cedric looked back at Harry. Sighing Harry held up his fingers and listed his adventures. "First year, hmm lets think, Unicorn-blood-drinking-specter, six foot mountain troll, baby dragon, cursed Quidditch broom, giant three-headed dog, adult Devils Snare, Man-sized wizard chess set, Potions challenge, Mirror of Erised, and Voldemort on the back of my DADA teachers head." Everyone winced at Voldemort's name and Karkaroff gasped, but Harry hurried on before anyone could interrupt, "Second year; Deranged house-elf, Flying car and whomping willow, rogue bludger, idiot DADA teacher who thinks he can heal, nest of a hundred or so Acromantula, Chamber of Secrets, forty foot Basilisk, oh and Tom Riddle… also known as Lord Voldemort, possessing a student."

"What!?" Karkaroff yelled this time, but Harry ignored him.

"Third year; Escaped mass-murderer supposedly out to get me, Dementors on the train, Dementors during Quidditch, Accidental werewolf encounter, discovering the mass-murder is actually innocent and meeting my parents supposedly dead betrayer… hmmm, I think that's everything." Harry looked up to find everyone staring at him with jaw's dropped. Madam Maximim was the first to recover.

"I am not believing you." She said faintly.

"I'm afraid I can confirm most of that." Professor Sprout sighed, then muttered as an afterthought, "Although I hadn't really tallied it all together like that before." Snape was staring at Harry in what appeared to be shock, although he still had his customary sneer in place.

"Vhat kind of school are you running?" Krum demanded of Dumbledore, who was rubbing his temples.

Thankfully for Dumbledore, Fleur and Cedric spoke at the same time, taking away his need to answer,

"Where is ze proof?"

"The Basilisk was REAL?!"

"Well what did you think was petrifying the students?" Harry asked Cedric, actually curious as to an outside opinion. He had always been curious about how his adventures effected the students not involved.

"I… Erm… I guess it stopped, so I stopped thinking about it." Cedric paused, "No wonder you're not worried about a mere thousand galleons."

"What does that have to do with it?" Harry wondered.

"Right of conquest."

Harry still looked completely blank.

"The Basilisk corpse. It's worth about five hundred galleons a pound, and as it's slayer it belongs to you."

"It should belong to the school." Snape interrupted with a sneer.

"Ah yes, I'm sure none of the hard-to-find potions ingredients especially belong to the… school." Professor Sprout grinned.

"Coming back to the tournament. I'm afraid you have no choice Potter." Professor Moody spoke up from directly behind Headmaster Karkaroff, making him jump half a foot in the air.

"I demand to add an extra student too." Karkaroff turned around and glared at Moody.

"You can't. The cup has gone out." Crouch insisted.

"Why not?" Harry spoke up.

"I just said, the cup–"

"Yes, but why can't they select an extra student to compete."

"The tri-wizard tournament will not allow extra–" Couch started in a voice like addressing a three year old.

"Well that's clearly bull." Harry snorted.

"Fifteen points from Gryffindor, Potter. Watch your language." Snape sneered. Harry ignored him.

"Well it is. I've been entered."

"Yes, but the cup–"

"Can't select anyone else, yes, yes, we all heard. But the Headmaster can. You two," he said, pointing at Madam Maxime and Karkaroff, "Can just pick an extra student."

"I don't wish to have another student enter!" Fleur complained to her Headmistress in a whiny voice. "Already we are given a smaller chance to win."

"What," Smirked Harry, "Worried about the 'little boy'?" Cedric and Krum snorted.

"But I agree," Krum sighed, "Ve already have less chance."

"I demand that something be done. I have other things I want to be doing this year, and quite frankly risking my life wasn't on the agenda." No one said anything, and Harry sighed.

"There's nothing to _be_ done. You either play, or lose your magic." Mr. Crouch repeated.

Professor Moody nodded. "I'm afraid so. What's it going to be Potter?"

"But I didn't enter!" Harry was starting to get really annoyed. Snape made a disbelieving noise and Harry turned on him and opened his mouth to say something, however Karkaroff cut him off.

"Well then who did?" there was a distinct sarcastic undertone which harry did not appreciate. "You obviously still go looking for glory."

"Who indeed." Professor Moody turned and got really close in Karkaroff's face. "As the boy said, he doesn't need to compete. He's _Harry Potter._ Can you think of no reason that someone might wish to enter the," He turned to Fleur, "little boy'?"

"What are you suggesting?" Karkaroff growled.

"I'm suggesting that the only one here who has the right to complain is Potter." Everyone turned to face Harry, who was still glaring at Snape.

"How old are you Potter?" Moody asked.

"Fourteen."

"And you Krum, Delacour, Diggory?" he didn't give them a chance to answer.

"We have been 'oping to be chosen for weeks." Fleur's argument sounded weak even to her. "This is a chance many would die for!"

"Perhaps someone is hoping Potter will die for it."

"Hopefully we'll aim for injured." Harry said sarcastically, breaking the awkward pause that had followed Moody's statement. But what he said made sense to Harry, and he was getting more and more annoyed at Dumbledore by the minute. _Why aren't you doing anything!_ He thought. _I am meant to be your student. You are meant to protect me._

Madam Pomphrey laughed out loud, and Professor Moody turned to face her, but she just scolded him. "Oh don't give me that look Alastor. I know better than most what state to expect Potter in at the end of the year." This started Snape and Karkaroff off again.

For another hour the staff all argued, with the occasional input from the students. Other than direct questions Harry remained silent. He was seriously thinking about what Moody had suggested, and about Sirius. Sirius had said that strange things were going on, and that he wanted to be close to Harry. Was that just because he was worried about his godson, or because he _expected _ Harry to be involved. Every year he had some big event, and even including last year it involved Voldemort, after all, if his dreams and Trelawney's prophesy were true, then Peter really was back with Voldemort. _Could Peter have entered me?_ Harry wondered. After all, who would notice a rat sneaking in, in the middle of the night?

After an hour Madam Pomphrey complained that they needed to send the students to bed. All the adults had decided was that it had to be a powerful wizard who entered harry, as they must have confused the goblet into thinking there was a fourth school. That, and that Harry would just have to enter.

"Right, well… I'll just let you know what's ahead then?" Ludo Bagman rubbed his hands together, the only one not effected by the whole conversation. If Harry didn't know better he'd say he was glad of the extra champion.


	12. Chapter 12

Cedric and Harry walked back to their dorms together. They walked in silence, Harry not knowing what to say. Eventually they reached a point where they needed to go separate ways and they came to a stop.

"Look… I'm really sorry." Harry said, feeling the statement was completely inadequate.

Cedric gave him that funny look again. "You _really_ didn't want to enter?" He asked once more. Harry shook his head.

"I swear on my magic." He said lightly, then jumped out of his skin when he suddenly glowed.

"Wow. A magical oath, you didn't need to go that far Potter." Cedric joked, but Harry could feel the tension leek out of the air.

"Erm… I don't know what it is?" He said awkwardly.

"What?" Cedric asked, obviously shocked.

"I don't know what I just did." Harry repeated.

"Aren't you a half-blood?" Cedric asked.

"Well, yeah, but I don't exactly have parents to tell me these things." Harry said annoyed. "What was that?"

"Sorry." Said Cedric, and sounded like he really meant it. "I just thought… I mean surely you were brought up by wizards?" Harry shook his head and Cedric's jaw dropped in disbelief.

"Nope. I didn't even know about magic until I got my letter."

"Bloody hell." Cedric looked truly shocked. "Right, well, what you just took was a magical oath. You should really finish with 'so mote it be', and then if you lied, you'll lose your magic." He looked curiously at Harry for a moment, but Harry finished the oath, and then with a sarcastic voice cast _lumos_, getting a bright glow from the end of his wand. Cedric stood there contemplating for a moment.

"This isn't going to be good." He finally said.

"What?"

"The fallout. I'll talk to the Hufflepuffs, and the Ravenclaws I can talk to my girlfriend Cho–"

"What?" Harry was shocked, and a little bit of him died for losing Cho, but at the moment he didn't feel as if he could begrudge Cedric anything.

"What?" Cedric echoed.

"Wh– right, sorry. Just…" Harry searched for an excuse. "Um. You don't need to do that." He finally finished lamely. But Cedric just smiled. "I really are sorry. I don't know how I can make it up to you…" He sighed.

"Well I won't say I don't care. Because I do." Cedric laughed, and Harry felt even more guilty than before. "But," he looked Harry over, "I don't blame you. I would like to find out how it happened."

Harry shrugged "These sort of things always happen to me. What do you think about this first task? Are you nervous?" Harry tried to change the topic.

"Yeah." Cedric nodded, "It hasn't really sunk in yet, I think. You?"

Harry gave him an appraising look. "Scared as fuck." He gave Cedric a small wave and started up the stairs.

"I'll see you in the morning…"

"Are you still up for Flying?" Cedric yelled just before Harry reached the corner. Harry was shocked, but grinned.

"Yeah… yeah, that would be great."

"Six then?"

"Six." Harry nodded.

Harry didn't know what Cedric had to deal with when he reached his common room, however he had arrived to find everyone still awake, and a full-blown party running.

"Harry!" One of the twins called out, the moment he entered. Suddenly he was surrounded by people, and was almost knocked to the ground with heavy pats on the back, and hugs.

"You should have told us you entered!" Fred bellowed

"And with no beard in sight!" George agreed.

"If it wasn't me. At least it was a Gryffindor." Angela grinned, hugging his then heading back to dance. That relieved him a little, however no matter how many times he tried, no one would listen when he said he didn't enter.

"How did you do it?"

"I can't believe you got one up on Dumbledore."

"Here, have a butterbeer. Celebration for Hogwarts being sneakier than any other school!"

It didn't take long for Harry to want nothing other than his bed. He slowly made his way across the room, then snuck up the stairs, collapsing on his bed. He rolled over to see Ron sitting on his own bed, glaring at Harry.

"Hey. It's crazy down there." Harry said, ignoring the glare. He suddenly became aware that he was still draped in a Gryffindor banner Lee-Jordan had unearthed, and struggled to untangle himself. Ron just sat there grinning in an odd way.

"So, Congratulations. How'd you do it?" Ron asked. Harry felt the anger in him swell up again.

"What do you mean Congratulations?"

"How did you get past the age line?"

"I didn't put my name in." Harry replied in a flat tone.

"Oh come on, you don't have to lie to me. I'm your best mate." Ron said in a patronising tone. "I just wish you'd have let me in on it as well. I might have wanted to enter."

It was taking every bit of Harry's energy not to explode, but that was the last straw. The glass in the bathroom mirror suddenly exploded and Harry jumped to his feet.

"Listen, I didn't put my name in. Someone else must have done it. Moody reckons–"

"And why would they do that?" Ron laughed, a dry, closed laugh to match his odd smile. Harry clenched his teeth.

"Moody reckons someone entered me to get me killed." Ron laughed again, and it itched against Harry like nails on a chalkboard.

"_You_ won't get killed. _You_ always come out just fine. I said before, that _you_ would be fine in the competition, after all _your_ adventures." Ron's meaning was quite clear. Harry had had a very long night. He had spent the last hour listening to teachers debate between Harry being a worthless student who entered for his won gain, and the horrible ways in which this tournament would be bad for his health. It was a great relief to have convinced Cedric, however upon entering the Gryffindor common room his thought had been _will no one but Ron and Hermione believe me straight away_? Ron's accusations felt like betrayal. He punched Ron in the nose. Hard.

"Wh- What!?" Ron fell to the floor and sat there staring up at Harry shocked. Harry wasn't sure if it was because Harry had once more got some unwanted fame, or from surprise that he could hit so hard. Harry hadn't been a punching bag for ten years and hadn't noticed how to hit.

"What the hell was that?" Ron yelled. Neville opened the door, took one look between Harry and Ron, and shut the door again.

"That was the end of our friendship." Harry said calmly. He picked up the Gryffindor banner and his pillow, and walked out of the room.

"Are you okay?" Neville asked. He was waiting just outside the dorm on the stairs.

"Why? Do you want to know how I entered too?" Harry demanded sarcastically.

"You put your name in?" Neville asked in shock, and Harry immediately felt bad for yelling at him.

"No. Sorry, I shouldn't have yelled."

Neville just smiled it off like usual. "Are you okay? Do you have to enter?"

Harry ran his hand through his hair frustrated, "Yeah, it's either that or lose my magic."

"Oh."

"Yeah…" Harry laughed shakily. "Oh."

They made their way back down to the common room, and Harry searched out the twins. "Urgh! I need to talk to everyone."

"Hmm…" Neville waved Fred… or George? Over, and whispered something into his ear.

"Speech. Speech. Speech. Speech." George (Harry was pretty sure it was George) started the chant. Grinning at Harry Neville motioned to a small coffee table and Harry sighed in relief and stood on it.

"Okay guys." Harry started,

"And girls!" Katie yelled, working off the traditional Quidditch speech. Harry smiled sheepishly at her, but blanked his face and took a deep breath.

"And girls. You're not going to like this." Suddenly the common room went very quiet. "I really didn't put my name in." Harry held up his hand to keep the silence. "I've just spent the last few hours arguing my point, and I'm only going to say this once more." He went over the arguments that had come up in the meeting, each adventure, and what Moody thought.

"You really think someone wants to kill you?" A seventh year boy asked.

Harry shrugged, "I'm not really sure about that, but in the very least someone wants to make me look like a fool, or get seriously hurt." He didn't feel like explaining the whole Voldemort-isn't-really-dead thing. You have to pick your battles.

"So you didn't enter." Fred said, still sounding sceptical.

"Was it you with the betting pool?" Harry asked. The twins nodded. "And my name wasn't on there because…?"

Both twins mouths formed a perfect O. "because our… tracking… system didn't show you entering."

Harry smiled. "Because I didn't."

"But still," said Angela, "We can celebrate a Gryffindor competing." A cheer followed this, but died out as Harry shook his head. "Oh come on! Why not?" Angela whined.

"Look, how would you have felt if you'd been selected, and then a fourth year Hufflepuff got chosen as well?" Understanding crossed Angela's face.

"Pretty annoyed I guess." She admitted sheepishly.

"Yeah," Harry agreed. "Look, I know this school is all for house rivalry, but this is an _international_ competition. Support me if you want, but I didn't even enter. We should support Cedric. He's been really good about this."

Slowly the room nodded, and eventually Lee called out, "Yeah, but I don't want to ditch you, so how do I support Cedric first?" Harry grinned at that.

"Thanks. Well, I did have an idea, but I don't know what you will think, and I might need some help." He glanced at the twins, who showed four thumbs up.

"Right, well…" Harry explained his idea.

The next morning his alarm went off just before six, he rolled out of bed, only to fall off the couch he'd been sleeping on. Even though he had managed to get the house to listen, he was still pissed off at Ron, and hadn't gone back to the dorm. He was stiff from lying on the lounge, and had only had a few hours sleep, but he wanted to meet Cedric. He found the pitch cold and empty, and felt a bit vulnerable. A low fog rolled over the grounds so he decided to take to the air and wait, doing a few slow laps he couldn't help but let his thoughts wander. Yesterday he had felt on top of things, he had a few new ideas about getting Sirius cleared, he'd finished the long essay for Runes, and felt that he was actually on top of most class work. Now, a mere twenty-four hours later and he was entered into a dangerous competition, possibly had someone out to kill him… or at any rate _actively_ out to kill him, Voldemort always seemed to be at it, and was sitting on a very fine edge with having the school turn on him again.

"Oi Potter!"

Harry had been doing lazy loops and not really thinking and Cedric's yell shocked him enough that he slipped a bit. "Argh. Wait up, I'll come down."

He was up quite high, so decided to just dive, he let the broom almost drop out from underneath him until he was heading perpendicular to the ground, and only pulled up just in time to slip neatly off the broom and land in a standing position a few feet from Cedric. Seeing the older Hufflepuff there made his heart a lot lighter. Despite feeling confident the night before, he hadn't realised the tension he was feeling until he landed and saw Cedric's grin.

There was an awkward silence.

"That was some dive."

"Man am I glad to see you here." They both started at the same time, then laughed.

"Did you think I'd go back on my word?" Cedric laughed.

Harry shook his head. "No, but I thought you might change your mind after a good sleep."

"Is there reason for me to?"

"No." Harry kept his voice very decisive, "I'm really sorry again, I spoke to my house."

Cedric's eyebrows went up. "About what?"

Harry blushed, "Well, they were, erm… a _little_ enthusiastic about having a Gryffindor champion." Little was definitely an understatement.

"Ha! You should have seen the Hufflepuff common room last night, complete chaos, they were still celebrating when I left this morning."

"Wow. We quit at about one. I was surprised McGonagall let us off that late."

"Hmm, yeah The Professor is usually pretty strict, but she was there celebrating with us until two, and when she left put up a silencing charm so we wouldn't get the attention of any other staff." Cedric grinned, "I must admit I gave in about three, and have only had a few hours sleep. Hufflepuff doesn't usually get much to celebrate, so this is pretty big."

Harry suddenly felt awful again. "Yeah, um, I just want to let you know that Gryffindor has decided to support you first, as the Hogwarts champion."

"_Gryffindor_ has decided huh?" Cedric teased, and Harry blushed.

"Yes, well, they might have needed a little push, but we can be loyal too if we need. I just pointed out a few key ideas and it all made sense." At Cedric's questioning look Harry explained. "This is an inter-school competition, you're our school champion, so we support you. However as my friends they support me too."

Cedric smiled and pulled out the snitch. "That's surprisingly loyal, but nice nonetheless. Now, however, shall we fly?"

They both took off, and Harry took straight to the high, while Cedric did a few laps around the stadium, after a minute or so they met, like in a game, at mid-field.

"So…" Harry felt rather awkward practicing with another seeker, he'd always been kind of separate from the team, and when he practiced with Ron it was always focusing on the keeper. "How do we do this?"

"It's a bit weird isn't it? I normally run the team practice, and just follow the snitch once I've got them doing drills. How do you guys run it?"

Harry grinned, "Trying to steal our technique?" He teased, "After warm up they go over chaser drills, while me and the twins play tag."

"Tag?"

"Yeah, four bludgers, one seeker."

"They hit you with four bludgers!" Cedric yelled shocked.

"They try." Harry laughed. "It's a surprisingly good way of practising manoeuvring. Oliver usually has a few specific drills I have to fit in, and at any point we get the chance we're meant to randomly dive through the chaser drills, scatter them and keep them on their toes. Sometimes I play beater too, so three of us aiming for the chasers. Fred and George have a go at Keeper every now and then when Oliver wants to watch and critique, or we'll leave the hoops free, and once we played this great game where me and Oliver were the 'goals' and the chasers had to try and get us in the back. The twins were allowed to aim at the girls, but not us, and the girls were only allowed to hold the quaffle for twenty seconds. Most of the time we do ground or manoeuvre drills. And we always start with a tactics lecture and finish with a workout. How about you guys?" Harry had been counting off things on his fingers and looked up to see Cedric shocked.

"Wow, no wonder you usually flatten us all. I still haven't got over the four bludgers. _FOUR_! Most of it sounds the same, only we don't usually let the bludgers out too much, and we never thought of using moving targets for shooting. We do practise dives a lot, as a team, and start a session with throwing the quaffle on the ground, then in the air. I usually make them run a few laps, then race an 'obstacle' course. Around the bleachers and up to the tower and back. Nothing too close because we don't have players like you and the twins."

"Yeah," Harry nodded, "We're pretty lucky with the twins. No offence, but your beaters are definitely your weakest link. Ravenclaws do okay, but they favour different arms, which works against them, and Slytherin rarely picks for skill. If hooch actually called on all fouls I doubt they'd even have a chance to see the quaffle."

Cedric laughed and shook his head. "Sadly my beaters were in need of some work. I only had three try out and one could barely lift the bat, and you tell me you give that a go too! I'm even more jealous of Wood. You've got a great team. We can't do much with that now though, but maybe we could try a game of tag."

"We don't have any bludgers." Harry frowned.

"Thank god. No, I was thinking that we could take turns being the snitch. I don't want to let mine out until the fog clears, but it's already lifting."

Harry agreed and they were soon racing about the pitch, it was actually really fun, and with an intelligent 'snitch', each of them could anticipate more, and they found that the chase was a lot harder, even though they were big enough that they were tagged as soon as they got close. The fog helped a lot, and Cedric soon found Harry enjoyed steep dives into it, where he disappeared, then popped up on the other side of the pitch. After an hour the fog had lifted and they let out the snitch and Harry was feeling confident enough to attempt a Wronski Feint, however while he could pull off a neat dive, he still needed practice on the acting, and it took Cedric the third attempt before he actually followed Harry on his dives. Soon they were too cold and sweaty and hit the change rooms for a shower before heading up to breakfast.

"You're completely crazy Potter." Cedric said, as they made their way up the lawn.

"Ouch. And call me Harry."

"Oh no, that was a compliment. I don't know how you convince yourself to get so close to the ground. I never have. That first game you played back in your first year was still your best I think. Just for shock factor. I remember hearing through gossip that Wood had got some first year for seeker and was thinking that we'd have a few years to work with while he trained you up. Then I found out it was the famous Harry Potter, and we thought he'd gone for a name. You got on the pitch, and while you sit natural on a broom, you did nothing for ages, just kept out of the game up high. Then there was the whole faulty broom issue, which, no offence, didn't improve my opinion of you… except that you knew how to hold on. Then you go and pull of that amazing stunt where we all thought you were falling and you pull up with less than an inch to spare, stand up on your broom, and catch the damn thing in you mouth! It's been nothing but crazy from there either."

"Ha ha. I'd totally forgotten about that. It wasn't a faulty broom though. Quirell was cursing it. I loved that broom. Sadly after our game last year it tried to make friends with the whomping willow."

"Ooooh, ouch."

"Yeah. But my godfather got me this one," Harry gestured to his Firebolt, "It's the closest gift I have to from family, so I guess that makes up for it." He grinned.

"Your godfather obviously hasn't seen you play. Otherwise he would have got you a slower broom, you don't need to head for the ground any faster than you already do."

Harry laughed, getting a little out of breath from walking up the hill at the same time. "No way, he thinks I'm crazy too, but loves it."

Cedric was frowning. "What do you mean 'the closest gift to from family'?"

Harry went quiet very quickly, he'd been having such a good morning he'd forgotten he wasn't with friends, and hadn't meant to let that slip out. After a bit he just shrugged it off.

"My Aunt and her family hate magic, and by proxy me." Cedric opened his mouth but Harry talked over him changing the subject. "Okay, so you may be about to hate me too. I did mention I talked to my house… and while it was my fault that I didn't consider the twins, in my defence I didn't think they'd get so into it."

Cedric gave him a confused look, but Harry shook his head and stepped into th great hall.

They had been enjoying training and it had got quite late. Most students had arrived down to breakfast, and were giving the Gryffindor table very odd looks. Cedric stepped through the doors behind Harry, coming to a stop next to him.

"Harry…?" He sounded very unsure.

"Sorry. A seventh year taught the twins the charm. I didn't think they'd be so… enthusiastic?"

The charm was one that made anything black it was cast on flash any colour you chose at varying intervals. As a result the Gryffindor robes, which other than the red trim, were predominantly black, were the perfect objects. One quarter of the hall looked like an emergency signal, flashing a bright yellow that almost made you shield your eyes every fifteen seconds.

Until their arrival the other students had been eyeing the table warily, unsure if they were being sarcastic in their choice of colours, however as un planned as it was, Harry and Cedric entering together did a great deal more in convincing the other houses that Harry hadn't entered himself than anything else ever could. It suddenly became clear that despite Harry being part of it, Gryffindor were clearly (and brightly) supporting Cedric as the rightful Hogwarts champion.

"Wow." Cedric finally managed.

"Yeah… sorry. Unfortunately they weren't so good at the counter charm." Harry said apologetically. He himself hated attention, and couldn't help but feel this warranted a little too much enthusiasm.

"That's… that's…" Cedric couldn't help it any more and suddenly burst out laughing. As such, this was how Draco Malfoy found Harry, standing next to a laughing Cedric.

"Ah look boys, it's the champion," he said to Crabbe and Goyle, "Got your autograph book. Look here, you can get Diggory to sign it, then let Potter spit on it with the respect he shows for everything else." He sneered getting a lot of laughs from the Slytherin table, as well as a few Ravenclaws, and Harry was heart broken to see, Ron, who had entered just behind the ferret.

"If they want yours they'll have to get in quick though won't they Potter. After all, I don't imagine you'll be around much longer… half the Triwizard champions have died. How long do you think you'll last? My bet's on ten minutes into the first task." This received many more laughs, and did nothing to improve Harry's mood.

"Well he'll certainly do better than you ever would." A female voice spoke up from behind them. Hermione had already gone to bed when Harry got back last night and he was dreading seeing her, worried she'd abandon him like Ron did.

"Going to miss your boyfriend when he's dead mudblood?" Draco sneered, getting more laughs from the Slytherins especially. Hermione just turned up her nose. "He's not my boyfriend. He's my friend. You obviously wouldn't understand those, so we won't worry you any further. Come on Harry." She smiled and gestured out the door. Harry smiled back queasily and followed. They were just slow enough to hear Cedric thank Malfoy sarcastically for showing such good school loyalty, and enquired how he thought he was going to do when Harry named him as his second in the competition. There was no such thing of course, but they just caught an undignified squeak coming from the blond Slytherin prince, which boded well for the rest of the conversation they couldn't catch.


	13. Chapter 13

They walked together in silence out to a tree on the edge of the lake. Hermione pulled out a pile of toast and conjured a blanket for them to sit on.

"Thanks." Harry said taking the toast.

"So you have to compete?" she checked. Harry nodded and she made a sort of sad sigh. "I went over the rules last night and I couldn't see any way out, but who put your name in?"

Harry let out a long breath he had been holding all morning. "You don't think I put my name in?"

She gave him a strange look. "No, you didn't even want to enter. Why would I think you had?"

"Have you seen Ron?" Harry asked trying, but failing, to sound neutral.

"No. He was in the great hall, but was down the far end. I saw the yellow and figured you wouldn't want to be in there… but you came in with Diggory?" She ended the statement like a question.

"Oh, the yellow was my idea." Harry put off mentioning Ron, unsure how to discuss it, unsure how he felt about it really.

"Oh… oh Harry, that's wonderful!" She said, dawning understanding growing on her face. "How did you convince them though? When I went to bed, sorry but I wanted to look up the rules, they were celebrating Gryffindor and making Harry Potter banners."

Harry smiled lightly. "Well at first I stormed off." Hermione rolled her eyes and Harry gave her a mock glare. "But then… well, I got pissed off that I'd managed to convince the other champions that it wasn't me but not… not…" Harry couldn't say it. Even though he had less than the usual amount of people against him, not having his best mate there hurt.

Hermione was frowning, a look of intense concentration on her face. Harry could tell the instant she figured it out.

"He didn't." She demanded. Harry shrugged. "Oh Harry, you know he probably doesn't mean it. Not really."

"What do you mean. He was pretty clear that he thought I'd entered my name. He was a royal prat actually."

Hermione shook her head. "Can't you see. He's just jealous."

"what?"

"Oh Harry, it's not your fault. Not really, but he has all those brothers. And your Harry Potter." Harry growled, "I know you hate it," she spoke over him, "but you are to everyone else, and this is just one time more you get the spotlight and he gets pushed to the side. One time too many I guess." She sighed.

Harry was even angrier than last night. He couldn't believe it.

"So he's annoyed that Harry Potter is getting the limelight?" He asked angrily, she nodded.

"He's annoyed at me because… let me get this straight, 'yet again'? I'm stealing all the stares, all the rumours?"

"It's not quite like that…" Hermione tried, but Harry was pissed.

"Well it's close enough. It doesn't matter anyway. We're through. So he can stop worrying about his best friend being ogled at more. Now he doesn't have one so he can get as much pressure and adventure to himself as he wants."

"Please don't say that Harry. He'll get over it and the two of you will be back to normal." She reassured, but Harry wasn't interested.

"No Hermione. Because this won't go away, and I'm not interested in being judged by my best friend _again_."

"He didn't really think you were the heir to Slytherin." She tried.

"No," Harry said sarcastically, "that time he actually believed me. He still thought it was dark that I could talk to snakes." Hermione couldn't answer that, so Harry stood up, wanting to do something. It was the weekend and he had a whole two days to avoid his best friend.

"Want to come to the library?"

Hermione sighed. "Sure. You know even I'm beginning to worry you are spending too much time there. What are you even researching?"

Harry gave her an odd look. "You mean you don't know?" He wasn't sure whether to be insulted or not. She obviously understood this as she blushed heavily, "Well, I have been rather involved in my H.E.W project, and it _is_ important."

Harry laughed. "I'm looking up a way to free Sirius."

Hermione stopped dead, just staring at him.

"What?" He asked, flattening his fringe self consciously.

"That's– that's… oh Harry I'm sorry I haven't helped." She was looking distinctly teary and Harry was getting nervous.

"It's okay 'Mione. House elves are important too. Although to be honest I really think they are happy here."

Hermione ignored this. "Well I can help you today. I'm waiting for my parcel of wool before I can continue with that anyway, and we should write to Sirius and let him know what's happening."

Harry blanched. "No."

"He'll want to know."

"Know?! He'll turn up in the bloody great hall! He already left his safe haven to come north to be close to me just because of some stupid dream. I can't tell him." Although Harry was thinking more and more that it wasn't just some stupid dream. In it Voldemort was being assisted by Peter Pettigrew… assisted to plot his death. And now he was in this tournament.

"Harry this isn't going to remain quiet." Hermione interrupted his thoughts quietly.

"What do you mean?"

"Well the tournament is famous, and hasn't been run in almost a century, and _you're_ famous. Whether you like to admit it or not. It's probably going to be in international news even, and definitely in the _Daily Prophet_."

Harry was staring at her open mouth hanging.

"Oh no." he said, "I'm going to have to talk to Rita Skeeter aren't I?" He demanded resignedly. Hermione almost laughed at how pitiful he looked, but managed to hold it in… just.

"Yes, I imagine she's been wanting to get her claws– erm, I mean hands, on your story for quite a while."

"Fine. I'll write to Sirius. But I'm going to have to double my work on researching how to keep him safe once he's here."

"You're going to have to dou–" She trailed off staring at him again. "Okay this is ridiculous. My friend Harry never planned. And he didn't have extra research projects. _Who are you_?" She laughed.

Harry smiled lightly. "Would you kill me if I told you that I purposely failed a bit…" He trailed off at her incredulous look and backtracked, actually taking a physical step away from her as well as she turned angry. "Okay, would you get angry if I told you I used to get punished for beating Dudley to a grade?"

Suddenly her face blanked of emotions and her whole body relaxed. If anything this scared Harry more.

"We have to get you away from them." She said in an eerily flat tone.

"Sirius." Harry nodded.

"So that's why–" she began.

"Not only that!" Harry complained, "I always got blamed for things that weren't my fault, and the dementors are…" He trailed off. "No one. _No one_! Should go through that when they are innocent. Actually I don't really think they deserve that if they are guilty."

"It's a little cruel." She agreed sheepishly.

"Cruel? Ha! Wizards aren't willing to sentence people to death, only to years and years of torture, possibly to insanity. Sometimes I wonder if having magic negates the need for having common sense."

"Nonsense Harry. You have plenty of common sense, and plenty of magic."

"Ah yes 'Mione, but I'm also the exception to almost every rule we've found."

Hermione made a small 'hmff' noise, but otherwise didn't comment.

They lightly argued and bantered their way up to the library, where Harry sequestered himself for the whole day, and much of the next one. Having Hermione help out was great, he could bounce ideas and she surprisingly (although it shouldn't have shocked him) knew a fair bit about wizarding law. It was looking like the best idea was to convince a foreign country to listen and grant Sirius a trial, then have him turn himself in. Of course that meant smuggling him out of the country, and while that wouldn't normally be an issue – just slipping into the muggle world, the muggle government still had wanted posters up everywhere as they were having a slow news year, so it became more tricky. Fudge seemed determined to persecute the wrong man.

Now that she was concentrating away from the elves, Harry managed to double the list of protection charms and spells he had, and Hermione even knew a good ward book they could take if there was somewhere with only one entrance. Of course most of these depended on where Sirius was planning to stay. Harry was still relying on the twins faith that as a marauder that explored the area he would know somewhere in Hogsmead.

They didn't discuss Ron, but there was an awkward moment on Saturday night when they returned to the common room and everyone burst into cheers again. Hermione had gone to sit with Ron while Harry had headed for the dorms, only she had shrieked to see he had a black eye from where Harry hit him, and had got into an argument about it. Despite asking them to support Cedric, and the almost unanimous choice to support the yellow flash charm (As Fred had named it simply), the house had decided to root for Harry in the tower, and there were an embarrassing number of drawings and banners everywhere. Much to his distress his telling everyone to support Cedric had only increased everyone's hero-worship, and the few that had been against the idea had mostly come around. Dean admitting that at first he had been appalled at cheating in a sport, but realised that Harry really didn't mean it.

Ron quickly found himself in the minority, and being almost shunned by the house. After he tried to get Harry at a disadvantage for hitting him, he had almost ended up with a second black eye to match it. Katie Bell had not been pleased to find out that Harry's best mate didn't support him. She had been surprisingly protective, and told Ron rather brutally that she wouldn't be interested in having anyone who didn't even trust their best mate on any future Quidditch team. Ron got pissed at this and said that Harry was more likely to succeed Wood, even if Katie was a year older. Katie then pointed out that Harry wasn't likely to want him either, which didn't go over well.

"I'm sure I'll forgive him by then." Had been Ron's unfortunate answer. Harry was too busy staring at Katie to say anything, and mightn't have had much of a chance anyway.

"_YOU_ will forgive _HIM_! You know the only person who has any interest in his fame in your little group is you, but don't worry, I think you've shown Harry pretty well that you are only interested in _Harry Potter_, and don't have any idea who just Harry is." She then stormed off up the girls dorm leaving a shocked and fuming Ron, and a surprised common room. Harry had made things worse between them as Ron demanded to know if that was what he thought too. (Or at least that's what Hermione said he said later) Harry was too busy having an epiphany to answer. He had been crushing on Cho Chang since about half way through last year, as a pretty Quidditch player, when all this time there had been one he actually knew and knew he liked.

Katie had stood there defending him passionately. Her hair had been flung across her back and she had put her nice hands on her delicate, feminine waist. Angela and Angelina were pretty too, however they were too much of the tom-boy type for Harry, and dwarfed him as well. Katie was… perfect, and all of a sudden Harry couldn't help but wonder how he hadn't seen it before.

Of course, while this was a great discovery, Ron didn't take well to being completely ignored by his supposed best friend, and had walked up to Harry and given him a shove.

"You think you're all that!?" He demanded.

"I'm all what?" Harry glared, "Famous? Well I'm sooo sorry for specifically doing that to annoy you."

"And you just _had_ to get some more of it." Ron glared, ignoring Harry's insinuations.

"I'm not going to repeat myself."

"Oh yes, _you didn't enter_. Just because no one _saw_ you. Because I can't think of _any_ way that you have of being invisible."

"So you still don't believe me. Which is why we still aren't friends." Harry shrugged, wanting to escape to think over his new feelings for Katie.

Ron wasn't the only one who still didn't believe Harry, or think he didn't deserve to be a champion. Harry had avoided the main hall all weekend, and other than Cedric every morning, and a group of seventh year Ravenclaws who always sat at the desk next to Harry's in the library, he hadn't seen many people outside his own house. Most of the Hufflepuffs were pleased that Gryffindor were supporting Cedric, and had been given a talk-to by Cedric in one of their house meetings (something Harry couldn't believe were weekly when Cedric told him), so had almost forgiven Harry. They still held a little grudge, because no matter the reason, Harry was still entered, and would still be against one of their own.

The Ravenclaws were divided. Cho had spread Cedric's thoughts, and most of the school knew that it had been at Harry's say that Gryffindor take on Hufflepuff yellow in support, however they still felt that there should only be three champions (as of the rules) and that they didn't have all the facts, so Harry was still under scrutiny.

Slytherin of course followed Draco's lead. As one of the wealthiest he was at the top of their social structure, and as a result hated Harry on principle, and the tournament was just icing on the cake.

Going back to class was the first time he was in close contact with people who weren't supporting him regardless of whether he entered his own name or not. Draco had organised a particularly nice surprise which sunk his spirits straight away.

"Hey Potter, do you like my badge? Those of us who can tell apart a fake from the real deal can show our support." He was wearing a large badge on his robe, which said "Support Cedric. The REAL champion." Harry was about to ask if he could have one when Draco continued.

"Oh, and look at this." He tapped the badge with his wand and it started alternating between that and "POTTER STINKS" in large red letters. Harry sighed and just tried to ignore it. Not too many people were wearing them, however before first period Ron had two on his bag. What had really hurt was seeing Hermione approach a second year Slytherin and buying two whole boxes. She had grabbed them ad headed to Runes early, so he hadn't even been able to confront her. Closer to the start of class Neville joined him and they headed to class together.

"I'm sure she wasn't planning on wearing them." Neville tried to cheer him up. "Maybe she just wanted to see how they work?"

"She knows how they work. They are her design, or close too. Only not for H.E.W."

"She's still worried about the elves?" Neville perhaps went for a change of topic. Unfortunately they reached the classroom by then and the badges were lining Professor Babbling's desk. This hurt too as Professor Babbling was normally really nice to Harry. He still hadn't got around to chatting with her about his mum too.

Fortunately his mood did one-eighty when she actually arrived.

"Good morning class." Professor Babbling smiled at them. "Now I understand we've had a bit of excitement last week. Some more than others." She winked at Harry, who tried to smile, but just glared at the badges.

"Ah, yes. I've decided on a slight change from our lesson plans. Hermione here has suggested a new project. Some unintelligent student has come up with the slogan 'Potter stinks', and I couldn't help but feel we could come up with something better. Nicer colour schemes too. Maybe more fancy flashing?" She waved her wand and the chalk spelt out the new words formed on the board and Harry's spirits soared.

_POTTER SUPPORTS CEDRIC TOO_

_Support him_

"Keep the first message and this will be what the other message should say, but I expect everything else to be of your own design. I want to see lots of colour, brightness, pattern, graphic design and creativity. Twenty points for the best design by the end of class. You'll find the most useful information in chapter six and chapter thirteen. Once you have your idea, give the runes a go, then raise your hand and I'll check them and make some suggestions, and give you a badge to work on."

In the end they had a really fun class, and Harry probably won over some more Ravenclaws (who they shared with) when he got so enthusiastic about the duplication transfiguration at the end, and made fifty of his badge. His design was yellow with flashing black writing on the first message, then a badger image (nicely drawn for him by Su Li) runs across the badge, then it changes to black with white writing, but red for 'Potter', and yellow for 'Cedric'. He also added a third image of the Hogwarts crest, except with DIGGORY written where the motto usually sits.

"You know I don't think she would have let me suggest that if it wasn't you." Hermione said pocketing her five badges. She had charmed hers to change whenever someone mentioned five different tournament related phrases, and had a colour changing background of each house colour.

"Yeah, she really likes you." Neville agreed. "You're a natural too, and she is so enthusiastic to have someone related to your mum. I think Lily was secretly her idol."

Harry grinned. "It's really nice to be compared to my mum for once too. Everyone always mentions dad because I look like him, and I hardly knew anything about mum before now, Aunt Petunia certainly wouldn't tell me."

Right as he said that they had gone around the corner and Neville had smashed straight into Snape. All three of them held their breath expecting an explosion (something seriously lacking in their potions classes these days, much to Neville's relief and Snape's disappointment), and things had been tense between them all.

Snape however was staring at Harry with a very odd look on his face. He was staring at Harry's badges. "They are a class project." Harry defended, thinking he was going to get into trouble for them.

"Why didn't you pick runes in third year?" Snape demanded, but calmly, catching everyone off balance, and causing Neville to let out a squeak of shock.

"I didn't know anything about the wizarding world and I didn't know what to choose." Harry said, trying not to sound too bitter. Snape's odd look increased, changing at the end to something that on anyone else Harry would have been sure was regret.

"Very well." Snape said, before walking past them and into the staffroom behind them. It took almost five minutes before Harry and Hermione could get over the shock, and Neville was still repeating "But he didn't do _anything_!" almost an hour later when they headed to Herbology.


	14. Chapter 14

**Herbology was a quiet class, they were mostly taking notes except for the last fifteen minutes spent sorting seeds for their next practical. Neville and Harry also discussed possible angles that Rita Skeeter might take in approaching the interview Harry had confirmed with Cedric (who had confirmed with his dad) that they would be getting the next day.**

"There's nothing really you can do once she'd published, so You'll have to head her off." Neville said, after a long debate about the various topics that might be covered. Harry realised that there was a vast deal of things he really wanted to keep out of the papers, and a few he needed to.

"Yeah, but how? How do I convince a reporter with obviously no moral compass or hesitation in Lying?"

They settled in to a contemplative silence only broken by the light squeals of the Hattilor seeds.

"I need leverage."

"You need to know what she wants in order to get that." Neville pointed out, sighing as he looked at Hermione's ridiculously small pile of sorted seeds, and reaching over to help divide them.

("But how can you tell the difference? They all look the same!")

"Argh! It's so frustrating, I just know this isn't going to end well." Harry tossed a large Hallitor seed in with the Hattilor pile, causing more squealing and a loud grunt. He frowned; picking the seed back out and examining it closer before noting the spores were hidden behind a clump of earth.

"You just need to check for common threads." Hermione interjected.

"Well that's rich," Harry frowned. "I may not have finished, but I have far less seeds than you left." He grumbled.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Not Herbology you dolt. Rita. You need to think about her target market, and the common threads or themes in her articles. What does she usually project in her articles? Then figure out what you want to say and spin it so it suits."

"Well she likes excessive drama and sob stories." Harry said slowly, "I guess she makes the story sound like it's an insult directly to the reader, part of an issue that involves them."

"Yeah, she seems to have a penchant for lies too." Neville agreed.

"That won't help much, unless you can stop it." Said Hermione.

"No, I mean, she likes it when the 'public' has been lied to. Scandal."

"Well we've definitely got that with Sirius. But I don't see her being interested in a supposed Azkaban escape when she has a teenage heart throb with a sad background." Harry groaned. "And I'm damned if I'll let her make me look like that poor woman last week."

"The one who has been sleeping with ducks?"

"She probably only allows them inside or something. But yeah, Boy-who-likes-ducks doesn't quite have that ring to it." Hermione snorted. Harry groaned.

"Isn't there anything to control what the media releases in the magical world?"

"Don't be ridiculous Hermione, we've been over this. Magic negates common sense." Harry grinned, but was still looking worried.

Neville frowned. "That's not true."

"We didn't mean you Nev." Harry joked.

"No, I mean about there being no control. My Gran has stopped the press saying anything about the condition of my p–… some family medical stuff. I could write to her, get her to send a contract. It might take a little while is all."

"You think so?" Harry looked brighter.

Neville shrugged. "Worth a shot."

"You can borrow Hedwig."

"Thanks."

Harry grinned to himself. Neville was really a great friend, and he was becoming more and more confident by the day spending time with Harry and Hermione. He'd confided last night that Madam Pomphrey was already suggesting lowering the calming potions he was taking in Potions.

The conversation was dropped as the end of class disturbed their privacy, and Dean, Lavander, Parvati, Seamus and Ron (reluctantly), joined them in walking back to the common room before heading to lunch. It wasn't until their free, working in he Library that Hermione suddenly brought it up again.

"A contract won't help you tomorrow Harry, you're going to have to bargin."

Harry sighed, tossing his quill down and happily taking a rest from Snape's horrible Potions essay. "With what? I don't have anything she wants."

"Yes you do. You have you." Hermione pushed.

Harry wrinkled his nose. "I'm not very exciting."

"She'll just make up an exciting history for you." Neville added. He'd joined them today as he too was struggling to make up the four feet of Potions, despite his calm in class.

"Yes, but only if the real story isn't exciting enough."

"My life wasn't that great, and I don't really feel like sharing it Hermione."

"Do you want to go back to your relatives?"

"I'd prefer not."

"But you need Sirius free for another option."

"We've been over this Hermi–"

"How much do you want it Harry?" Hermione spoke over him. "Is your story worth it?"

"What are you getting at?"

"My parents took me to Turkey a few years ago, and my shy little mum shocked me and dad beyond belief in the Bazaars. You have to be brutal to get a good bargin. Rita is going to be much happier just making up some sob story, than giving you what you want. You're going to have to sell it to her. Make her think what you want is what she wants."

"And you think me offering to tell her I lived in a cupboard for ten years will help that how?" Harry drawled sarcastically.

"WHAT?!" Neville and Hermione yelled, earning a glare from Madam Prince. "Harry, when you said 'your cupboard' I never thought you meant… oh but that's awful! How could they do that to their own–"

"I really don't want to talk about this." Harry said firmly, blushing. "I also _really_ don't want the whole world reading about it."

"Oh Harry." Hermione looked really upset.

"We'll think of something else. But we have to get you away from them." Neville said in his calm quiet voice, distracting Hermione with a different cause. Harry smiled a relieved thank you at Neville.

"Well fine then. But you still have to give up something to get something, so it'll have to be your Hogwarts stuff."

"Easy for you to say." Harry grumbled, but Neville had a very sly contemplative look.

"Is it true you fought a Basilisk?" Neville asked.

"Well yeah, but–"

"And there was that whole dragon thing in first year."

"Sorry again about that Nev."

"S'ok. Her readers are mostly house wives, so a sob story is always going to win out, but how about something that will make the wives worry over you, while impressing the husbands and brothers and making the sisters fall in love with the hero."

"What?" Harry spluttered at the same time Hermione grinned.

"Perfect! Then you can just tell her that you'll chuck in Sirius' story as a bonus."

"I thought we decided she wouldn't want to hear about Sirius?" Neville looked sceptical. Hermione's grin turned into a smirk.

"But it's like I said, you have to convince her that what you want is what she wants."

Harry was running the plan over in his head, and was bemoaning his terrible acting skills to himself before remembering his resolve to help Sirius.

"I just need to bring out my Slytherin side." He said biting his lip and frowning.

"You have a Slytherin side?" Neville and Hermione said sceptically in unison. Harry ignored them, an idea forming.

Suddenly he let out a loud laugh, "You were along the right track Hermione, and I think I know the perfect way to do it."

Madam Prince had had enough of Harry's noise and kicked him out. Harry just waved them off, telling Neville and Hermione to stay and heading off to bed to plot.

The next morning they had a Potions double. Harry had been up late plotting and spent his breakfast in the library finishing his essay. As such he arrived at Potions well after most of the Slytherins. Malfoy was showing off his badges again, and Ron kept flashing his deliberately in Harry's eyes.

"Want some more badges to work on Granger? I hear you had to get help from a teacher in enchanting yours."

"Oh yes Malfoy, because yours are so witty." Replied Hermione sarcastically.

Malfoy was either oblivious or ignored this. "Well here you go, I've got loads. But don't touch my hand, now. I've just washed it, you see; don't want a _mudblood_ sliming it up."

Harry was annoyed at Malfoy, but getting used to his stupidity, but Ron was standing directly behind him and laughing. Harry had managed to just ignore Ron's betrayal most of the time, but he'd been up late last night planning, and the essay had given him a headache from the tiny writing Snape demanded and suddenly the anger he'd managed to keep on the back burner for days swelled up and seemed to burst through his chest. He had his wand in his hand before he knew what was happening and everyone was scrambling out of the way. He didn't even see Malfoy draw his too, and had a curse off before anyone could blink. Malfoy retaliated, thinking Harry missed him, and sent a curse back, which Harry just sidestepped. It did draw his attention to Malfoy again.

"Go on then, Potter. Maybe this time you'll aim a little better."

"My aim was perfect thanks Malfoy."

Malfoy laughed, still not realising Ron was now covered in boils. Everyone else did though, and whispers started. Malfoy was the only one who thought he was still in a fight, but Harry was still mad, and quite happy to oblige him.

"Harry don't!" Hermione begged,

"Come on then, Moody's not here to look after you now."

Harry's anger diminished a little as he remembered the sight of Malfoy bouncing like a ferret.

"Whatever Malfoy." Harry lowered his wand, but Malfoy didn't.

"Densaugeo!" Draco yelled.

"Funnunculus!" Ron had managed to cure the boils on his face and attack, making Malfoy spin thinking he was being attacked from behind, and fall over.

Harry managed to block Ron's curse, reflecting it back, but Malfoy's struck Hermione, causing her to cry out and cover her mouth. Malfoy, still thinking he was the target, shoved Goyle in front of the curse, causing Harry to swear under his breath for missing Ron.

He turned back to see what was wrong with Hermione. It wasn't pretty. She was whimpering in panic, and desperately trying to cover her mouth. It wasn't helping much as he front teeth were now growing at an alarming rate; making her look more and more like a beaver as her teeth elongated, past her bottom lip towards her chin.

"What's all this about?" Came a familiar drawl. Snape came up to the group and pointed at Malfoy. "Explain."

"Potter attacked me–"

"I was aiming for Weasley!" Harry yelled, interrupting and causing the entire group to go silent in shock. Malfoy shook himself out first.

"He got Goyle!" He argued.

"You pulled him in front of a curse aimed at Ron you idiot. Besides, you hit Hermione, and you weren't even involved."

"Name calling is unnecessary Potter. Five points from Gryffindor."

"I think Hermione needs the Hospital Sir." Harry said, ignoring the points. He forced Hermione forward. Pansy Parkinson snickered at Hermione, whose teeth were now past her collar.

Snape sneered down at her. "I see no difference."

Hermione let out a whimper; her eyes filled with tears, she turned on her heel and ran, ran all the way up the corridor and out of sight.

It was lucky, perhaps, that all the Gryffindors began yelling all at once, because it echoed so much that none of the foul language Harry used could be heard over the din. Snape got the general gist however.

"Ten points for abusing a professor Potter. Now everyone, get inside before we waste more of today's valuable time."

Malfoy strutted past, and Ron slunk in, ignoring his boils and looking relatively ashamed. Harry didn't move though, waiting until it was just he and Snape. He hadn't talked much with Sirius about when the marauders were in school, but a few hints, along with some more from amongst Professor Babbling's stories about his mum had told him enough to know Snape had been subject to bullying from the marauders. Of course, he'd also heard that he'd given his own back, and had turned on Lily in later years too.

"Get inside Potter!" Snape snarled, Harry made no move to enter. Harry raised his eyes until he met Snape's cold black ones.

"Does it feel good sir, to know that as a teacher, in a position of power, you were just a bigger bully to Hermione, and caused more hurt than they could ever have done to you?" Harry snarled. He didn't give Snape a chance to respond, spinning on the spot and getting to the end of the corridor and around the corner before any more points could be deducted.

Harry made his way to the hospital wing, coming across Goyle on the way. The boy appeared to be lost, thrown off by not being able to see through one eye where Harry had deflected the curse. Goyle eyed Harry warily with his good eye and drew his wand. Harry sighed.

"Sorry about that." Harry said, gesturing to Goyle's face. "I'm heading to the Hospital wing to check up on Hermione, if you need a hand."

"You hate us." Goyle said angrily.

Harry sighed again, but gestured for Goyle to join him before starting to walk. "No, I hate how Malfoy regards my friends."

"You think you're better than him." Goyle insisted, although he sounded a lot less aggressive, and almost interested.

Harry laughed. "Only because I think his ideals are stupid. Apart from anything else one of the main reasons he thinks himself above the rest of us is because his dad is so rich. The funny thing is I'm pretty sure that for all Hermione's supposed dirty blood, her parents are dentist, and make a hell of a lot of money. Hermione's family could afford to buy several Malfoy Manors if they wanted to, and she has certainly proved herself a competent witch."

Goyle surprised harry by laughing. "I'm not really into the whole anti muggle-born. But they really don't understand our culture as well. They couldn't. Besides, muggles really are weaker. They don't have magic. We do."

"Of course if we told them about magic earlier, and taught them our culture, it wouldn't be a problem." Harry pointed out.

"Yeah, but we don't." Goyle shrugged. "I'm surprised you're not just cursing me for dissing muggles instead of listening."

"I'm surprised you're not cursing me for supporting them." Harry quipped back. Goyle smirked and they descended into silence for a while.

"You're not what I thought you were." Goyle said, as they reached the hospital wing.

Harry laughed. "We don't know each other at all. Hell, I wasn't even sure you were capable of speech until just now."

"I don't usually have anything I wish to share." He smiled.

"Mr. Potter! What is wrong with you now?" Madam Pomphrey caught sight of Harry. Harry held up his hands.

"Why do you assume it's me whose injured. I'm just showing Goyle here along."

"Because it usually is you. Now Mr. Goyle, what have you done."

"Potter cursed me." He grinned.

"Technically it was Ron and I just rebounded it." Harry argued.

Madam Pomphrey 'hmphed' and bustled Goyle to a bed, while Harry walked over to Hermione, who was looking back to normal.

"Are you okay?"

She nodded, but still looked a little teary. "Pomphrey shrunk my teeth, and gave me a calming draught."

"Sorry 'Mione. I shouldn't have reacted."

"That's okay. How did you get out of class?" She asked, changing the topic.

"I didn't…" Harry blushed. "I may have stormed off.

"Haaarey…"

"Snape had no right to say that to you! I wasn't going to hang around an let him gloat."

"Poor Neville."

Harry winced, feeling bad for abandoning him.

"Thanks Harry. For being angry for me, even if I don't approve of you missing class."

"What are friends for?" He smiled.

Harry sat with Hermione, chatting quietly (Getting a comment from Madam Pomphrey that 'at least all your time spent in here has drilled good bedside manner into you'), and surprising Hermione by drawing Goyle into the conversation. Hermione and Goyle were rather wary of each other, but got along with no major arguments.

Because Harry wasn't in class, a very puffed looking Colin Creevey came rushing in much later than was necessary, having run all over the castle trying to find him.

"Harry! They need you for a wand weighing ceremony. We're late!" He grabbed Harry's sleeve and began dragging.

"I'll catch up with you later!" Harry yelled, as he was dragged off.

"It's amazing, isn't it Harry. You being champion." Colin said, chatting away enthusiastically.

"Yeah, erm… amazing."

"You're so lucky!" Colin said awed. Harry couldn't really see what was so lucky about being forced to enter a competition aimed at students above his skill level with a high rate of mortality added in, but he didn't say as much. "Hmm…"

"Do you know what the first task is Harry?" Colin chatted away. Oblivious to Harry's disinterest.

"No."

"I hope it's something fun to watch… So I can get good photo's. My brother has been taking some too, but will miss out on the usual action shots from Quidditch, so it's luck they're having this tournament."

"Yeah…" There was that word 'luck' again. Harry sighed internally.

"I hear Bozo is here. You're so lucky to meet him."

Harry wondered idly who on earth 'Bozo' was, and why he should be excited to meet him. The conversation went on for quite a while, until they finally reached the empty classroom being used for the wand weighing ceremony.

"Good luck!" Colin said, as Harry knocked.

"Yeah. Thanks Colin." Harry sighed as he saw a bunch of journalist, including Rita Skeeter. _'God, if everything goes to _my_ plan, I'm going to end up with more people like Colin._' Harry thought depressingly, second guessing himself. He saw Rita's predatory gleam however, and realised that if he did nothing it would be worse. Besides, Sirius needed help.

The desks had been pushed to one side of the room, and there was a group of adults, mostly press, in one corner. Fleur was talking in rapid French to Madam Maxime, while Krum looked up and glared at Harry from where he was standing moodily in the corner. Harry wondered what he'd done to piss the Bulgarian off. Cedric was quick to wave Harry over to where he was standing talking with …Olivander? Of course Harry shouldn't have been surprised to see the wand maker, as it was a wand weighing ceremony, but he couldn't help but remember what Olivander had told him when he got his wand. Harry loved his wand, and was very attached to it, however he was sure the press would have a field day if they discovered that it was a brother wand to Voldemort's.

The Ludo and the cameraman were watching Fleur avidly, but upon his entrance Bagman ponced across the room.

"Ah, welcome Harry. The fourth champion! Good to see you make it. We're just waiting on Dumbledore and Karkaroff, the ceremony will begin when they arrive, then we have a small photo shoot. Ah, this is Rita Skeeter." Ludo finished, noticing Harry's attention on the Magenta clad witch, "She'd doing a small article on the tournament."

"Maybe not so small." Rita said, eyeing Harry hungrily. Harry felt extreme relief that he'd planned for this.

Her hair was set in elaborate and curiously rigid curls that contrasted oddly with her heavy-jawed face. Her jewelled spectacles glinted across at Harry and he had to try not to smirk as she eyed him up and down. _You'll be surprised Rita_, he thought. Two-inch nails, painted crimson, gripped at a crocodile-skin handbag with a large feathered pen an notepad gripped in the other hand.

"I wonder if I could have a little word with the youngest champion before we start? You know… add a bit of colour to the story."

"Certainly!" cried Bagman. "That is – if Harry has no objection?"

"I don't think tha–" Cedric began, looking at Rita alarmed, but Harry brushed him off.

"Of course! Lead on."

"Lovely," said Rita Skeeter, and in a second, her scarlet-taloned fingers had Harry's upper arm in a surprisingly strong grip, and she was steering his from the room again and opening a nearby door. Harry sent another silent thanks for being prepared.

"We don't want to be in their with all that noise," she said. "Let's see… ah, yes, this is nice and cosy."

It was a broom closet. Harry stared at her for a moment before deciding that, while unconventional, it would stop people listening in. The door slammed behind them, sending them into darkness. Rita quickly pulled out some candles from her crocodile-skin bag, lighting them with a wave of her wand and setting them to float in mid-air.

"You don't mind if I use a Quick-Quotes-Quill do you?"

Harry smirked, snatching the quill out from Rita's hands as soon as it left the bag. Rita's smile faltered.

"Rita Skeeter." Harry drawled, "Oh have I been wanting to meet you."

Rita was sent completely of skew as the balance of power suddenly shifted to Harry. His smirk widened.

"You have?" Rita said, eyeing the shut door behind Harry.

"Oh yes," Harry said dangerously, "I know what you want Rita… I can call you rita can't I?"

"Yes of cour–"

"Excellent. Like I said, I know what you want, and I'm sure we can come to some sort of arrangement."

"Wh- What?" Rita was completely confused, one moment she had been completely in control of the situation, dragging a small teen into a controlled environment, the next she was glancing edgily at the sealed door, and carefully and the evil smirk on Harry's face. Harry didn't help the situation by pulling out his wand and waving it in a complex pattern and sealing he door further.

"I said I know what you want. You want my story Rita. And while I'm sure you could easily make something up, you'll be surprised at how exciting the true story really is."

"I always write the true story." She said indigently. Harry laughed, running his finger along the Quick-Quotes-Quill. Rita felt a shiver go down her spine.

"Hmm… tell me, would your story involve a forty foot Basilisk… of which I can get you photos of the corpse? Entrance to the fabled Chamber of Secrets? How about a Dragon, a three headed dog, a Cerberus and some highly coveted alchemy?" Harry suddenly held out her pen, "How about a TRUE story of treachery and betrayal on the night of October of 81'… in detail?"

Rita leaned forward and reached out to grab the end of her quill. Harry didn't let go, only using it to pull her in closer.

"I think we could come to a mutually beneficial agreement Rita. Don't you think your readers would enjoy knowing what happened?"

"What do you want?" She demanded. Harry let go of the quill and smirked.

"What you want Rita."

"I want a good story." She said bluntly. They were obviously negotiating, and he had some BIG bait.

"I want three." Harry grinned now.

"Three?" She seemed sceptical, but positive.

"Three." Harry nodded. "I want to hear how someone befuddled the Tri-wizard Cup. How I am forced to enter, but more about how Cedric Diggory is the true champion of Hogwarts, and how whoever did this needs to atone for stealing that from him. I want to hear about how BOTH of us represent Hogwarts, but that I'm only doing it because I have to… Maybe something about the poor international relations. After all, Fleur and Krum got a poor deal too. We all did. I'm forced to enter, and they have to compete against an extra champion."

Rita had seemed sceptical at first, but as Harry mentioned international relations, and _four_ cheated parties, instead of one, her eyes began to gleam.

"I could work that."

"I've no doubt you could."

"Number two?" She sounded greedy now.

"My story at Hogwarts. I'm not interested in sharing the stuff before that, but I promise you, it'll be worth your while."

"… A Basilisk you say?"

"With photos… although admittedly I don't know what a year and a bit worth of rotting will have done."

"The magic should hold it together for decades." She was almost bouncing now.

"And the third?"

"The third is the best. What do you know of Sirius Black?" Harry smirked to himself. She was eating out of his hand.

"Mass-murderer. Your parents betrayer."

"And Peter Pettigrew?"

"A war hero!"

Harry smirked. "He's meant to be dead, isn't he?"

Rita looked confused for a moment, before showing shock. "He's alive?!"

"Alive, and the real traitor. Black never got a trial, thrown away by Crouch, because it was convenient. Pettigrew hid out, until last year, when Sirius, and I, caught up with him. He managed to escape again, but I only after he confessed it all to me. I'll swear on my magic." Harry grinned.

Rita was staring in shock. "But that's… that's…"

"Awful. A scandal? The biggest news to hit the stands since Voldemort's demise?" Harry smirked.

"Cornelius won't like it." She said, frowning.

"Are you going to let that stop you from uncovering the best story in decades?" She frowned more. Harry didn't like it. He knew Fudge would be a problem, and had a vendetta against him after last year, but he was thinking like a Slytherin now, using every bit of cunning he had, and knew when to cut his losses.

"Fudge didn't put him in jail."

"Yes, but he's got a man-hunt out after him." She argued, looking disgruntled.

"You've never been particularly attached to the truth Rita. Lie."

"I don't know–" She began to bristle, but Harry interrupted.

"Don't tell Fudge. Just print an article saying _he_ discovered Sirius' innocence, and that he is calling off the manhunt in order to set to rights the _previous_ governments failings. That _he_ discovered this monstrosity through a better government." Harry smirked, and slowly, ever so slowly, Rita's smile followed.

"I was under the impression you and the minister didn't get on."

"Sirius Black is my Godfather."

"Oh Merlin, that's journalistic gold!"

"I refuse to discuss it, and all deals are off is it's mentioned, but my childhood was crap, and all because I couldn't live with my Godfather. It stays off limits until the third story, but you will use whatever resources we need to get Sirius free."

Suddenly there were footsteps outside the door. Harry quickly waved his wand dispelling the ward.

"We'll need to meet again: next Hogsmead visit. I'll mail you."

Dumbledore pulled the doors open with a jerk, and Harry went sprawling onto the floor.

"Dumbledore! How are you?" Rita smiled, but a very different one to the one Harry had just seen. "I hope you saw my piece over the summer about the International Confederation of Wizards' Conference?"

"Enchantingly nasty," said Dumbledore, his eyes twinkling. "I particularly enjoyed your description of me as an obsolete dingbat."

Rita didn't look remotely abashed.

"I was just making the point that some of your ideas are a little old-fashioned, Dumbledore, and that many wizards in the street–"

"I will be delighted to hear the reasoning behind the rudeness Rita," said Dumbledore, with a courteous bow and a smile, "But I'm afraid we will have to discuss the matter later. The Weighing of the Wands is about to start, and it cannot take place if one of our champions is hidden in a broom cupboard."

"Ah yes, yes, interesting that you should need to wait for a _fourth_ champion. I did think there would have been some protection for–"

"The ceremony…" Dumbledore interrupted. Harry smiled a little, it was interesting watching two people so good with words avoid conflict.


	15. Chapter 15

**CHAPTER 15**

"Right then, Let's get to it!" Ludo Bagman announced; just as if there was a huge crowd watching, instead of the champions, their school heads and six reporters.

"May I introduce Mr. Ollivander?" Dumbledore smiled across at all of them, getting a scowl from Bagman for interrupting. "He will be checking your wands to ensure that they are in a good condition before the tournament begins."

Harry felt another random bought of nerves. _'Not sure how much the condition of my wand will really reflect my chances of survival'_.

"Mademoiselle Delacour, could we have you first, please?" Ollivander interrupted Harry's thoughts.

Fleur swept across the room to Olivander and handed over her wand. Ollivander checked it from length to tip, then twirled the wand in his fingers like baton, causing it to emit a number of pink and gold sparks.

"Yes, nine and a half inches… inflexible… rosewood… and containing… dear me…"

"An 'air from ze 'ead of a veela," said Fleur. "One of my grandmuzzer's."

So Fleur was part veela, Ron had been curious. Harry was mid-thought through noting to let him know when he realised Ron wasn't talking to him anymore (and he wasn't sure if he was talking to Ron).

"Yes, yes. I've never used veela hair myself, of course. I find it makes for rather temperamental wands… however, to each his own, and it does suit you quite well."

Harry wasn't sure if that was a compliment or an insult, and was a little worried about his shared core again.

Mr. Ollivander ran his fingers along the length of the wand, checking for scratches or bumps, before muttering "_Orchideous_!" and producing a bunch of beautiful flowers, which he then presented to Fleur, followed by her wand.

"Very well, very well, that's in fine order. Mr. Diggory, you next."

Cedric handed over his wand.

"Ah, now this is one of mine, isn't it?" Ollivander had distinctly more enthusiasm, "Yes, I remember it well. Containing a single hair from the tail of a particularly fine male unicorn… must have been seventeen hands; nearly gored me with his horn after I plucked his tail. Twelve and a quarter inches… ash… pleasantly springy. In fine condition… You treat it regularly?"

"I polished it last night!" Cedric grinned. Harry looked down at his own wand. It wasn't in the best condition, mainly a small scratch from the Chamber of Secrets, but otherwise just covered in fingermarks. Harry sighed, but left it be. One polish was hardly going to make up for three-and-a-bit years worth of neglect.

Mr. Ollivander sent a stream of silver smoke rings across the room from Cedric's wand, pronounced himself well satisfied, then moved on to Krum. Victor got up and slouched, round-shouldered and duck-footed, towards Mr. Ollivander and thrust out his wand.

"Hmm, this is a Gregorovich creation, unless I'm much mistaken? A fine wand-maker, though the styling is never quite what I… however…" He examined the wand for a long moment, holding it just out from his nose facing outwards.

"Yes… Hornbeam and Dragon heartstring?" He shot a look at Krum, who just nodded. "Rather thicker than one usually sees… quite rigid… ten and a quarter inches… _Avis_!"

The wand let of a blast like a gun, and a number of small twittering birds flew out the end towards the open window.

"Good," said Mr. Ollivander, handing the wand back to Krum. "Which leaves… Mr. Potter."

Harry stood and walked over, handing his wand out. Mr. Ollivander looked at it for a long moment before reaching out to take it. He started commenting before he did.

"Ah yes, how well I remember." His hand grasped Harry's wand, and Harry suddenly felt a tiny bit lonely, he hadn't not had his wand since the Dursley's before Second year.

"And how have you been finding your wand Mr. Potter?" Ollivander looked over his glasses with a critical look.

"Excellent." Harry said defiantly.

"It will help you to great things–"

"So you've said before." Harry interrupted.

"And it suits you still?"

"_My_ wand suits _me_ very well thank you." Harry was a little annoyed. His wand was still his, no matter how many other feathers Fawkes had shared.

"Hmm… it has a scratch!" Ollivander complained loudly after examining it more closely.

"Yes," at this Harry's tone changed to a little sad. "It has had a lot of… use."

Ollivander examined it for a lot longer than he had the other wands, but eventually announced it was in otherwise perfect condition, that the scratch wasn't affecting the use, and to bring it to him at the end of the year to fix up.

"Thank you all," said Dumbledore, standing. "You may all go and return to class." Harry's heart started to sink, as he remembered Snape, however the photographer had different ideas anyway. He jumped up and demanded 'a few' shots. Nearly thirty minutes later the champions escaped. The photographer kept dragging Fleur to the front of the picture, with Harry next to her, and Cedric and Krum at the back, and the school Heads to the side. In the end Madam Maxime was just too big, and had to be given a seat, and sat in front with all of them surrounding her. Rita had different ideas entirely, insisting of shots of the four of the champions standing in a simple row, first with their school head's standing behind (or in the case of Madam Maxime, kneeling), and then asked for the same, with just the champions, and Harry suspected that this would be the one appearing in the Daily Prophet tomorrow.

Much to Harry's relief, by the time the photography was done Dumbledore permitted them to skip the last fifteen minutes of class and head to the great hall for lunch. Harry meandered slowly down to the hall just thinking, and Neville was sitting with Lavender and Parvati half way through a piece of quiche when he arrived.

"How did you piss off Snape so much?" Neville asked immediately, sounding slightly awed.

Harry grimaced. "Ah, I imagine he isn't too happy with me."

"Happy with You!? He kicked you out of class!"

Harry looked up at the empty seat at the heads table that usually held his despised potions master. He hadn't, of course, been kicked out, but if Snape wanted to save face on Harry walking off, he would let him. Especially as it would mean Harry might have a chance at avoiding detention.

"I had the Wand Weighing ceremony just now." Harry said, instead of answering. Neville still looked like he wanted to talk about annoying Snape, but was a bit distracted.

"The what?"

"Basically they checked over our wands, make sure we haven't damaged them or anything."

"Oooh, a wand is a very personal thing. What's yours made of Harry?" Lavender cooed.

"If it's so personal, why'd you ask?" Harry said, in a slightly flirty voice. He was rewarded with a light slap from Lavender, which he pretended to cringe in fear from.

"Oh alright, alright. Holly and Pheonix feather if you must know. Now, I've told you mine, won't you tell me yours?" Harry winked, causing both girls to giggle. Neville was staring at Harry in shock. Harry sat with them for a while longer, discussing how Lavender's unicorn hair, and Parvati's Chimera fur (much more popular in India, where her grandma took her to get her wand), were far superior to Fleur's grandmother's veela hair. However after not too long Harry made an excuse and dragged Neville up to the common room, and their dorm.

"What on earth was that?" Neville demanded, as soon as they were out of hearing.

"Fred and George bet me some of their Christmas fudge that I couldn't flirt to save my life."

"Is that why they kept falling of their chair?"

Harry snorted. "Yep. Partially from disbelief, and partially because Lee has cursed the back of their robes."

"Ha!"

Harry grinned.

When they reached their dorm Ron was there, however after scowling at Harry and telling him 'You've got some more fan mail', he cleared out. Harry took the letter from the school barn owl, before turning to face Neville again.

"So Rita was there."

"Oh?" said Neville excited. "Did it work then?"

Harry's grin grew even wider. "Hook, line and sinker."

"Huh?"

"Oh, sorry, muggle saying. Don't you have fishing?"

"Yeah, but that explains nothing."

Harry then got into a long discussion about wizarding fishing, which involved simply _accio_ing the fish out of the water. Dean and Seamus returned half way through and it became a pretty big debate. Harry had obviously never been allowed to join in, but he knew how much Vernon and Dudley liked fishing (Harry suspected it was mostly because you didn't have to do much. Dudley had little patience, but they usually attempted the wild first, before heading to a trout farm, where Dudley would catch 'the biggest fish ever seen' at one of the farms where you were guaranteed a catch). Neville and Seamus couldn't understand why muggles wasted their time with sticks and hooks.

As such, it wasn't until after Runes (which Neville and Harry had to run for), and Charms, until Harry actually had time to open the letter. It was from Sirius.

_Harry,_

_I can't say everything I'd like to in a letter, it's too risky. In case the owl is intercepted – we need to talk face to face. Can you be alone by the fire in the Gryffindor Tower at one o'clock on the 22__nd__ of November?_

_I know better than anyone that you can look after yourself and while Dumbledore and Moody are around, I don't think anyone will be able to hurt you. However, someone seems to be having a good try. Entering you in that tournament would have been very risky, especially under Dumbledore's nose._

_Be on the watch, Harry. I still want to hear about anything unusual, especially anyone who tries to help or hinder you in the tournament. Let me know about the 22__nd__ as quickly as you can._

_Love, S._

Harry sighed. It would be great to talk to Sirius, but he would feel a lot better knowing the common room would be safe to talk in. He said as much to Neville, who suggested talking the Weasley twins into helping clear it out.

"What? And spend the whole time catching up surrounded by stink bomb smell. No thanks."

"The Cherriwomp flower negates the smell. I've got some powdered in my trunk."

"You're a freak of nature Nev."

"Better than a freak of defence. Less chance at dying."

Harry just snorted and they made their way down to dinner. The meal was a rather quiet one, other than Cedric coming over and sitting down next to Harry when the desserts came out.

"Alright. Spill." Cedric said, reaching over and helping himself to a bowl of custard. Ron let of a strange noise that Harry was sure was an aborted growl.

"Spill what?"

"What deal did you cut with Skeeter?"

"Harry smirked. "I have no idea what you mean."

"Damn Sneaky brat. Why do I feel like I'm not going to like this?"

"Because you hang around me so much, and know me so well?"

"Bloody Gryffindors." Cedric moaned, causing several 'hey!'s and a flying truffle.

"Hey, you were the one who entered the Bravery and Battle Tournament."

"And yet I feel like you're playing on so many more levels than I am."

"Neville said I need to bring out my Slytherin side."

"You have a Slytherin side?" Cedric said startled. Harry just smirked and started eating his fruit and custard.

There was a long pause before Fred and George turned up.

"Evening badger."

"I say, I like that brother."

"Badger, badger, badger, badger." Fred started to sing

"Badger, badger, badger, badger," george joined in.

However Harry whacked them around the back of the head with his Charms essay. "Shut it."

"Yes, Oh mighty tournament champion." Fred bowed.

"Talking of which, are you lost Ced?"

"I came over to find out how Harry talked his way out of sticky situation and discovered there are different desserts at different tables. I love custard."

Harry noticed Ron sit up straighter in the corner of his eye and snigered.

"Did you manage to find out?" George inquired.

"What do you think?" Neville spoke up.

"Hmm, oh well. At least you got some custard out of it." Both twins patted Cedric on the head in a patronising manner.

Cedric rolled his eyes, but glanced at Harry. "Thought about asking these two monstrocities to join us?"

"In the morning, you mean?"

"Yeah. I could do with the extra incentive."

"They don't have their own–"

"Our team does though." Cedric interrupted.

Harry laughed. "Yeah, sure. Hey, if we can find an extra keeper we'd have the whole team. The girls have been bugging me to come down."

"Really? We could have a game!"

"We'd need a keeper." Harry pointed out. He saw ron sit up straight in the corner of his eye, and with a bit of a vengeful streak said loudly, "I don't know anyone whose any good."

"What about Padma?" Lavender spoke up. Padma blushed brightly.

"What?" Harry and the twins said in unison. "You don't even come to the games."

"I only tried flying for the second time over the holidays, after mum dragged us to the cup."

"Dragged!" Fred squeaked out.

"Sure. We'll give you a go."

"So a match then? How about Saturday morning?" Cedric grinned.

"You're on." Harry laughed.

The twins called the chasers over the moment Cedric took his leave, and began drilling Padma on Quidditch knowledge. The whole conversation got quite involved, and lasted the walk back to the common room and well into the night. Ron spent most of the time hanging around the edges shooting Harry death glares. The only reason Harry noticed was because Neville pointed it out. He had been enjoying being part of such a big group so much he had been oblivious. Much to his own shock, he just shrugged it off, and didn't even feel bad. Hermione sniffed loudly in the corner, but Harry wasn't sure if that was due to the loud conversation interrupting her homework, or because he was quickly letting go of his and Ron's friendship. Laying in bed later that night Harry debated with himself whether or not he should feel bad, but in the end decided that it was up to Ron to mend bridges this time.

He also spent a great deal of time wondering over the feeling he'd got every time Katie had brushed against him. It had happened quite a lot as she had squeezed herself between Harry and Lee-Jordon on the two-seater lounge.

The next morning Harry found himself feeling unbelievably nervous heading down to the great hall. Rita had mentioned that the article would come out the next day at the end of the ceremony. After arriving he had barely began to butter his toast before Neville nudged him in the ribs.

"Post." Neville said quietly, just before the sound of owls made most people look up.

A flashy red-brown owl landed in front of Harry carrying the Daily Prophet. There was a not attached. Harry went to pay the owl, but it took off as soon as he took the newspaper.

_Mr. Potter,_

_I am unsure if you had your own subscription to the Daily Prophet, so I took the liberty of talking to my boss, who is happy to provide you with a subscription free of charge. He found some of the information you regaled me with yesterday most interesting, and looks forward to any future correspondence. _

_The esteemed headmaster has forbidden any further 'encroachment' of the press on school grounds until the final task, however I look forward to meeting you again at a later date. I'm sure something could be arranged._

_It isn't only Hogsmead weekends that make students available._

_I hope your morning has been well, and am sure the article will only do to increase it,_

_Looking forward to future chats,_

_Rita Skeeter._

Harry grinned down at the letter, taking special note of the third paragraph.

"Hey Hermione, do you think she's trying to say something?"

Hermione looked it over carefully, reading it a few times before nodding.

"It certainly looks like it. I hope you know what you're getting yourself into Harry."

Harry opened his mouth to answer, but was interrupted by Cedric inviting himself to the Gryffindor table again.

"Anyone would think you were regretting your sorting oh Yellow one!" George hummed.

Cedric snorted. "Yellow one?"

Fred groaned and pulled a hot pumpkin juice closer to himself. "We aren't always morning people."

"Potter, just what blackmail do you have on the elusive Rita Skeeter?" Cedric demanded suddenly, switching his focus to Harry.

"Blackmail?" Harry said, raising an eyebrow. Cedric tapped his wand on Harry's newspaper, making it unroll and levitate in front of Harry's nose.

On the front page, the article rested under a giant full page picture of the four champions, crossed arms and clumped together looking outwards daring the world to take them on. Harry raised the other eyebrow to match and reached out for the paper.

_Yesterday afternoon, my dear readers, this reporter had the fortunate chance for which most reporters dream. I had an interview with the one and only Boy-Who-Lived, Harry James Potter._

_Now I have to admit, he was nothing like what I expected. A young hero, at only fourteen he finds himself currently entered into one of the magical world's most deadly tournaments, again, fighting against the fates. Not only this, but much to my surprise, he was incredibly polite and charming, and immediately set me right about a few facts. He did not, you may be surprised to hear, enter his name in the tournament._

_Harry, as he insisted I call him, was a polite young man, righteous rage expressed through sparkling emerald eyes looking out at me from under raven locks._

_"I didn't enter this tournament, and whoever did, has not only put me in a sticky situation, but is demoralising an attempt at international liason that should be represented fairly across the board. I can only hope that it wasn't a Britain representative who stole glory from the true champions." Harry commented, when asked about his entrance in the tournament. Further questions allowed a horrible truth to be revealed._

_The Tri-Wizard Tournament goes back centuries, and has always been a test of great bravery and skill, one which has sadly, seen many deaths. When asked about this Harry Potter had some more startling observations. "I have faced horrible adventures a few times now in my Hogwarts schooling, but I have to admit, the tournament has me a bit nervous. I don't know much about Krum (Viktor Krum, seeker of the recent World Cup Bulgarian team), other than him being amazing on a broom, and I know even less about Fleur (Fleur Delacour, age 17, Beauxbaton champion), but I know Cedric is an excellent wizard and I feel well out of my depth going up against such great representations of their schools."_

_I let the mention of previous adventures slide for now (but I promise my readers further investigation at a later stage), but was surprised by Harry's attitude._

_He responded to a request about the suspects of who entered his name with political grace, saying simply, "Well ex-Auror Professor Moody (Alistor 'Mad-Eye' Moody) said that it would have had to be an adult witch or wizard of considerable power to hoodwink the cup into thinking a fourth school needed a champion. He also suggested that whoever it was wasn't looking out for my best interests."_

_"And you agree with him?" I inquired. Mr. Potter gave me a serious look before laughing and whispering in a conspirator manner, "You may not have heard, Ms. Skeeter, but me and the previous Dark Lord had a slight disagreement. I imagine I'm not very popular with a few of his cronies."_

_I was, as you, my readers no doubt are too, a little shocked at his blasé approach to the events of October '81, however I noted a sad look behind his eyes and realised this was his way of dealing with those traumatic events. I have to applaud his resilience, and left the matter alone._

_I inquired about Harry's opinion on his chances in the tournament, and he said simply, "I will do my best." I have to admit the young man has impressed me, and I suspect 'his best' may turn out to be something indeed._

_Our interview was soon at en end, but Mr. Potter insisted that I include one further message. _

_"I just wish to ask everyone to do their best to focus on the champions efforts, rather than become focused on whatever wrongdoings have started the tournament off. I am entered, and while I don't like it, I will strive to emulate the other champions as best I can. We should all look towards the competition for what it is, an opportunity at new international friendships, and ignore whoever's attempt at ruining that. Whoever it is, is nothing more than a bully, and their efforts should just be put aside. I look forward to seeing Hogwarts compete, and the opportunity at seeing Drumstrang and Beauxbaton finest showing off."_

_ So let us, dear readers, turn to other affairs, such as excitement leading up to the first task. The first task has usually been a test of the champions bravery and mettle. One has to wonder how the champions will all meausure up. We have all seen young Viktor Krum compete before a crowd, but how will the Beuxbaton's beauty measure up, or our own Cedric Diggory? We have seen his father, an accomplished English Politician succeed in the public eye over the years, will his son succeed as well. Mr. Potter has faced an enemy greater than most of us can imagine, how will he compete against the three school's representatives? _

_There is only a short time until we find out. I promise you, this reporter will be with them all the way._

Neville, who had been reading over Harry's shoulder snorted. "I don't think I've seen you in a righteous rage before Harry."

"Yes, those emerald eyes do sparkle nicely though Harry, even if you do hide them beneath glasses and raven locks." Hermione added, grinning cheekily.

"Shut up" he blushed, noting most of the school was watching him. "Is there anything else?"

"An interview with a few wizards from the ICW, Krum's coach, Fleur's grandmother, and my father." Cedric winced at the last. Harry couldn't help but remember the interaction at the Quidditch World Cup portkey, and hoped Amos Diggory hadn't been too harsh.

"How'd that go?"

"Better than I would have expected." Cedric said, narrowing his eyes. "So I'll ask again, what blackmail do you have on Skeeter?"

There were a few giggles around the table, but a lot of people leaned in to hear Harry's answer.

"None," Harry winked, "But it won't be the only interesting article to come out. I'd get a subscription if I were you."

"You can be slipperier than a damn Slytherin sometimes." Cedric moaned, before walking off. Harry just shrugged, and motioned for Neville and Hermione to head to the library. Both nodded and grabbed some fruit for the day before heading out.


	16. Chapter 16

**As soon as they found a small area to themselves Hermione burst with information. She had somehow managed to read most of the paper while the boys only finished their breakfast, and seemed overly pleased.**

"There are other, smaller articles in the paper too."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, it's questioning who should get the blame for you entering, and mentions all three school's, and complains about how crazy Mad-Eye is, but how he might have a point. I think Rita may swing the blame around to the headmaster too Harry, are you sure this is sensible?" Hermione was biting her bottom lip in worry, but Harry couldn't help but notice she hadn't jumped straight to the defence of the authority.

"You sound like you might agree with them?"

"Well… it's just, it's not right!"

"What isn't?"

"I'm sure Dumbledore had nothing to do with your name being entered, but there should have been better precautions. At first I just brushed it off, but I've been looking up some laws to help you out with Sir- Snuffles, and I don't like what I'm finding."

Harry was surprised, he thought she'd mainly been looking up stuff for H.E.W.

"You have? Thanks 'Mione."

She blushed a bit. "Of course. Besides, I still had a few books I bought for defending Buckbeak last year. But back to the point, while I don't think _any_ of the teachers put your name in, some of them, and especially Dumbledore, should have stood up for you. Even when they believed you put your own name in."

"What's this got to do with Snuffles?" Neville interrupted. Harry smiled, Neville was sounding more and more confident by the day, and was really keen to help out Harry with Sirius' freedom.

"Dumbledore is head of the ICW. He should have got Sirius a trial, and I'm pretty sure he should have had better protections around the cup. I mean, if they had hidden the beards or taken a better dose, Fred and George could have got past the line too, and once their name was in, there would have been nothing they could do."

Harry frowned. He would like to know who entered him in the tournament, but despite any other ideas, he was fairly certain in the end it would come back to Voldemort, it always did. Not only would better security have stopped his name from being called, but it also brought up other security failures.

"Hermione… in first year…"

Hermione sighed, and she nodded. "I didn't think about it at the time, but those defences were pretty easy to get past. Not for us, but for an adult…"

Harry sighed. "I still don't think it was Dumbledore."

"No." Neville agreed, "But it worries me that we are so unprotected. We need to find out who entered you in the tournament."

"And we need to watch our backs. Whoever this is, probably isn't going to like the journalism." Hermione sighed.

"I have been slacking off on research for Sirius a bit too." Harry sighed. "Do I even want to know what sort of things I am likely to be up against?"

Neither Hermione nor Neville answered, Hermione simply standing and rushing off to collect a book on previous tournaments while Neville made notes from some warding books Harry had got from Madam Prince.

Hermione (after complaining for nearly ten minutes on how many fan girls were following Viktor Krum around the Library) had made a list of spells for Harry to learn before the first task, but Harry was still focused on freeing Sirius. He couldn't help but feel that it was more important for his future. Neville pointed out that surviving the task was quite important for any future he wished to have too, but Harry pointed out that he didn't even know what to expect, and the spells might not even help.

They worked individually throughout the whole first free period, but then had history of magic, so had to pack up and head off. Hermione abandoned them to take notes, but had actually given in and admitted that Harry had other things to be focusing on, when Harry had brought out a large law tome to study during class. Neville hadn't said anything, but by the end of the lesson handed Harry a three foot list of dot points for things to consider talking to Rita about. The three of them hurried through lunch, getting a disgusted look from Ron, who Harry blatantly ignored, and Hermione only made two attempts at polite conversation with between stuffing her mouth.

"You should at least try talking with him about this!" She argued, as they headed back to the library again.

"It's not me who has a problem." Harry growled, and Neville nudged Hermione in the ribs, distracting her.

"Did you get a chance to look at that list I wrote up?" He tried.

"Yes. And you should have been paying attention."

"Sorry Hermione." Neville backed down from her rage straight away, which obviously took Hermione off guard, as she was used to Harry and Ron, who always fought back. By the time they were settled at a table in the Library she had apologised and they were working on the list. Harry ignored them both, wandering over to ask Madam prince about a book he'd seen referenced in another he was reading.

"Marvolo Slytherin? Why on earth would you like to read his autobiography?" Madam Prince looked alarmed, which made Harry wonder exactly what the Slytherin line had been getting into. Maybe Voldemort wasn't such a big shock.

"I know that it's over six hundred years ago, but _History's big names in crime_ mentioned that he got off from some massive depravity against another wizard because of his title."

"You're not going to follow in your father's footsteps and throw your name around are you?" She frowned down at him, confusing Harry greatly.

"I don't throw my name around. It gets thrown around by everyone else. I hate being the boy-who-lived!" Harry said vehemently, then blushed, realising he'd been yelling at a teacher. Suprisingly, after a moment, Madam Prince just sighed.

"You really don't do you. Very well, but it is in the restricted section, and you will have to get a pass."

"Right." Harry said glumly, his heart sinking. "Thanks anyway." He began walking away before something else registered.

"What do you mean my father was always throwing his name around?"

"The Potter name."

This only served to confuse Harry more. "But I thought it was only famous because of me!" Harry blushed bright red when he realised how selfish that sounded.

"The Potter house is an Ancient and Noble house. I suggest you try _Potters: A history and list_, it's by Blamewell Greengrass. It's from a few generations back, but is accurate enough. It's in the Potter section."

"Potter section!?" Harry found himself raising his voice in alarm. Madam Prince reverted back to her usual scowl, and gave him a solid glare. Harry was easily disciplined, not wanting to loose the rapore he'd been building with the Librarian. So he backed down and went to check out the section. What he found appauld him. There were nearly twenty books on his life alone, several quoting him. He took every book out of the section, lugging them in a huge pile and dragging them back to the front counter. There were several copies of each.

"These are all false." He said calmly, but quietly. Madam prince simply raised one eyebrow, reminding Harry of Snape for a horrible moment. "They all have quoted me, and I've never talked to them. I want them removed from the Library, I'll buy them if I must."

"I cannot remove Library books." Madam Prince said firmly, but a little startled.

"Then can you at least move them to the fiction section for now?" Harry pleaded, apparently too loudly, as Viktor Krum gave him an odd look as he passed. Harry blushed and tried not to notice all of Krum's fan girls staring at him too.

"I will see what I can do."

Harry decided that would have to do for now, but made a mental note to add his own law suits to his to do list for after he freed Sirius. He returned to find just Neville, as Hermione had to leave for Arithmancy.

"What took you so long?" Neville said, "Me and Hermione narrowed down the list. Want to see?"

Harry blushed and ignored the first question, already mortified that he'd noticed that most of the Harry Potter books were loaned out on a regular basis, and not wanting anyone _else_ to know about it. He reached out and took the list from Neville.

_HARRY'S SCHOOL LIFE:_

_Troll fighting_

_Detention and seeing _someone_ in the forest._

_Norbert – How to avoid getting Hagrid in trouble?_

_Discovering Fluffy_

_The mirror of erased – seeing his parents for the first time._

_The challenges:_

_ Fluffy_

_ Devils Snare_

_ Chess_

_ Magic Keys/Flying_

_ Troll – and how we should have known_

_ Potions/Logic_

_ Quirrell – Disscuss V or not?_

_Dobby, underage magic, the platform blacking and the bludger_

_Parseltongue – how to spin this so you aren't evil?_

_Lockheart, and the substandard defence teachers at Hogwarts._

_Acromantula – and how Hagrid got blamed._

_The Chamber of Secrets – How to avoid Ginny getting blamed/ talk about V or not?_

_n.b. mention sword of Gryffindor._

_Dementors and learning the Patronus spell._

_n.b. don't mention Sirius too much here._

_THE REAL EVENTS OF HALLOWEEN '81_

_What you remember of that night (Sorry Harry)_

_The _REAL_ secret keeper._

_Sirius Black going after Peter Pettigrew._

_Animagus, and the truth – need to talk to Professor Lupin._

_Fudge fighting for justice – how to swing it our way._

Harry looked up from the list.

"I'm not talking about the mirror. That's personal. And seriously? 'Troll fighting' it makes it sound like we do it for larks every weekend. We'll have to be very careful if we talk about teachers, I can only imagine the back-lash. Actually there are a lot of things on here we really need to be careful about. I have been taking in quite a lot of what I've read on law, and we need to be careful treading on toes. I am happy talking about that night… well no, not happy, but I agree, the real story needs to be told. Maybe Rita will be able to dig up why he was even after us. Either way, I think we need a lawyer."

Neville looked uncomfortable. "Hermione and I were thinking it would be good for you to mention the mirror because people will realise you didn't know anything about your world until first year."

"And how long do you think it will take for them to guess my home life?"

"Right… I guess not then." Neville backed down immediately, making Harry feel bad. The writing was clearly Hermione's and he knew he'd have a lot more trouble arguing it out with her. He was a bit annoyed though, looking at the list. This was the second time he'd had all his adventures listed on one place, and had been thinking about it since defending himself on Halloween. Why was so much happening to him? It _would_ make for interesting news, but a teenagers life shouldn't. Harry frowned as they quietly packed up their stuff, Harry grabbing _Potters: A history and list,_ on his way out. They were silent all the way down to Care of Magical Creatures, and Harry hardly paid attention during class. Hagrid seemed to notice this, and after a while pulled Harry aside while everyone else was 'walking' their skrewets.

"How've you been handlin' the pressure Harry?" Hagrid asked kindly.

Harry shrugged. "It's been better than it could have been."

"Don't you go worrying, you'll get through this. You always do. An' Dumbledore's looking in to ways to get you out of it." Hagrid didn't sound so sure on the second point, however Harry had focused on the first one. _You always do_.

Why though?

Harry smiled lightly, and made polite conversation, only just managing to get out of helping with Hagrid's 'pets' outside of class. He eventually escaped just after the bell rung, promising to have a butterbeer with Hagrid at Hogsmead that weekend.

Hermione surprisingly didn't berate Harry too much, and agreed they needed to seek legal council on some matters. Neville was sent of to mail his grandmother about their family lawyer after dinner, while Harry wrote out notes on wards that could be put up easily, and tried to ignore Hermione's not so subtle hints at needing help knitting some clothes to give to the elves.

"I have enough problems with my own clothes without making some for elves too."

"But you helped free Dobby using a sock."

"And he is most welcome to more of my socks if he wants them, but I cannot afford the time, nor any of my clothes to give away."

"But–" Hermione began.

"You do realise that the elves belong to the school, don't you Hermione." Fred (Harry was getting quite good at recognising them… or at least he was pretty sure he was) sat down next to Harry, pulling his notes on warding over for a look.

"So? What does that have to do with anything?" Hermione said, frowning at the twins crossing something out on Harry's notes, and only now realising Harry hadn't been working on homework like she thought.

"Because even if they take clothes from you, they won't be freed. They have to come from their master."

"Which is Dumbledore?" Hermione demanded, throwing down her knitting and looking cross.

"Or the castle." George shrugged.

"Who even knows." Fred said mysteriously. "Now Harrykins, we were hoping to borrow you for a few moments."

"Oh?" Harry looked up, but seeing the twins looking sideways at Hermione suspiciously, just packed up his things and decided to head to bed for the night. He brushed aside Hermione's insistence on study, saying he'd work on their Runes homework with Neville tomorrow, and that he'd done his potions essay. He hadn't, but he'd looked the right section up in the textbook any way. He ignored Ron glaring at him as he went off with his brothers too.

"So what can I do for you boys?" Harry said, as Fred and George cleared a spot on Lee's bed for Harry to sit.

"We've done some more notes,"

"On the Animagus."

"But we need a potion"

"To find out our forms." They bounced off each other.

"Oh. Cool! I didn't think finding a form would be that easy."

The twins glanced at each other, before one (Fred, Harry thought) cleared his throat.

"Actually it's usually not… the potion is very, very hard to make. Not to mention expensive… only."

Harry stared a little shocked to see the twins blushing.

"You want me to buy the potion?"

"We looked it up, and it only comes in amounts that cover four people anyway."

"We'll pay you back once our joke shop is up and running!"

Harry was about to protest that as long as it wasn't a gigantic cost, he was quite happy to pay, when he was totally derailed.

"Wait, joke shop? Are you guys serious about that?"

"Yes." The twins said, and it spoke great volume for Harry that they didn't bounce around or add anything.

"Cool!" Harry blurted out, before he could help himself. "Ah, I mean… sounds great."

The twins snickered.

"Right, well. How much is the potion. I don't mind getting it… only…" Harry gave them the same calculating look he'd pulled on Rita Skeeter, making the twins squirm just as much. "I'll want something in return."

"Oh?" Fred said, looking wary.

Harry laughed, breaking the mood. "Yeah, I want you to both promise not to pull pranks on me while you're in your Animagus form."

The twins relaxed, and started joking again. Harry could see that they hadn't really liked asking for something monetary, and was surprised how easily his Slytherin side had put them at ease. He was also surprised how easy it was becoming to slip into his Slytherin side, and as he lay down to go to sleep that night, wondered if he really would have done well in the house of the snakes.

The next morning came bright and early, with a double Runes class first thing, and a mini exam for the first half, and a new group project for the second. Harry was paired with Neville again, and actually managed to enjoy working on abling and disabling runes. He especially found the air runes easy to minuvre, which professor Babbling said probably had to do with his affinity towards lightning. In a moment of pure stupidity that had him still blushing Harry had asked "What affinity to lighting" to which Lisa Turpin had thrown a scrunched up ball of paper at his forehead.

"How about I work on the earth and water runes, while you do the air and fire?" Neville said, as they reached the lunch table. They were having roast chicken today, and everyone seemed pleased with the hot roast vegetables that went with it (even the French girls, who had otherwise been disapproving of the English 'cuisine'). It had been pouring all day however, so everyone was digging in to the hot food.

"There is a lot of similarities between Air and fire, as both are emerging runes, while water and earth are perpetual ones."

Despite himself Harry was scribbling notes down instead of joining in eating. He wouldn't admit it, but even before the tournament he'd probably bitten off more than he could chew, and he was struggling to keep up. He'd re-read the potions essay that morning and realised it would be a lot more work than he thought it would, and Neville said Susan Bones told him Flitwick was going to give them a charms essay and three new spells to learn. Summoning, Banishing and stais charms were on a whole new level from what they had been studying. He hadn't managed to practice the spells on Hermione's list more than twice so far, and his law studies were hitting a dead end without getting access to the book on Marvolo Slytherin.

"It that because the base rune of air is only one stroke off the rune of fire? And what do you mean emerging and perpetual? I don't remember Babbling covering that." Harry sighed, shoving a potato in his mouth before pulling out his runes dictionary.

"No, it's because fire is one stroke of air. You've got the two the wrong way around. Emerging means you have to have a base element to work off, while perpetual means they can spring from nothing. It's how the bubblehead charm works, and how various fire wards are used for protecting things… albeit in a usually nasty sort of way."

"Wait so– the little t/w symbol is air, and the one that looks like a little dancer is fire? Damn it, I had them wrong all lesson. My exam marks are going to suck."

"Language Harry." Hermione said, not looking up.

"Yeah, watch your language Potter, you are turning into a right know-it-all." Malfoy said loudly, standing just behind Harry. "The little mudblood is rubbing off on you and Longbottom?"

"There is nothing wrong with sharing knowledge, jealous that you and your friends have got nothing on someone with supposedly lesser blood?" Harry snarled, barely looking up from his notes.

"Being a know-it-all won't help when you get killed in this task. I've been offering bets around Potter, and so far most people are expecting you to last ten minutes. You'll see your mudblood mother soon Potter."

Harry opened his mouth to angrily retort, however was cut off by a surprising source.

"Two points Mr Malfoy, no arguing in the hall." Snape's voice carried only loud enough for their immediate group to hear, but left both Gryfindors and Slytherins gaping. Malfoy stormed off, quickly followed by his little gang, and the only thing that stopped Neville from having a heart attack were the three points Harry soon lost for gaping.

"That's the second time Snape has acted out of character. I don't think it's really him." Neville hissed as soon as Snape was out of earshot.

"You think he could be in disguise?" Hermione sounded dubious.

"It's not normal." Ron piped in, surprising everyone, and making Harry glare. Ron blushed bright red and returned to his lunch, but Harry had noticed that since everyone was ignoring him Ron had looked more and more sorry. Harry couldn't decide if it was because he finally realised that Harry actually hadn't entered his name, or because everyone was on Harry's side. He wanted to give Ron the benefit of the doubt, but was still very upset.

"Maybe someone is pretending to be Snape to get close enough to put your name in the cup." Neville insisted.

"You can't seriously think someone would dress up as Snape just for that can you." Harry said wrinkling his nose in disgust. "Who would be willing to dress up as Snape?" He joked.

Neville obviously hadn't thought about this side of things and blanched. "Fair point."


End file.
